The New Unionism: more business as usual

by Bob Williams

Three years after his election to the presidency of the National Education Association, Bob Chase has proven himself a master at re-inventing the image, though not substance, of government education.

Chase, who promised to push for "high quality teaching" and "high-quality public schools," remains one of the greater examples of all talk and no action among the bureaucratic insiders who call themselves the reformers of government education. One need only look to local schools for evidence that if Chase has put any action behind his words, it has proven only aimless meandering. Our children today are more academically troubled than students of the past three decades.

Kids pay the price when union bosses play the shell game, hoping to appease public outcry over dismal performance among those who graduate from our government schools. Consider that one in four high-school graduates today cannot add well enough to make change or read well enough to use a bus schedule. It’s no wonder employers are leading the charge for education reform. But that reform must be real.

When Chase and others in the NEA identify their reform goals, their talk is vague and without measurable outcomes. Have Chase or his NEA colleagues written the words "we will only graduate students from high school when they can read, do basic math, and write a coherent essay"? No, and the reason why is simple: Nobody at the NEA wants a target on which the public will fixate.

In reality, what the NEA has given us in another example of how the government’s system of government education fails to meet the most basic of private-sector business principals: that you either give the customer what he or she paid for or you go out of business. And the American taxpayer should be hopping mad over the amount of money spent with little accountability on our so-called government education system.

In 1997, the NEA commissioned a report from the Kamber Group to analyze how the union could improve its public image. What the Kamber Group found was that the union was not only in trouble with the public, but also the union’s own members, who found its politicking excessive and extremist. Out of this report came an internal call to action, stating that the union must shift to a "crisis mode" and adopt the slogan "better teachers, better students, better schools" putting children and teachers at the fore of NEA communications whenever possible.

The Kamber Group report’s brilliance lies in its simplicity. Rather than identifying solutions for educational deficiencies, the essential element of the union’s plan was to create a new-and-improved image by putting the faces of young children on all its public dealings. And who can doubt the appeal of children? Hence, when the NEA talks about a reform as being "for the kids," it’s easy to forget to examine the merits or demerits of its proposals.

With rare exception, we all have high emotions for the well-being of children, and most of us have fond memories of our school days and the professional educators who taught us. So when the teachers’ union puts the faces of educators and children up front, we feel before we think. And that is our first mistake.

The union’s first concern is for the well being of the union and not the education of students. Period.

Consider Chase’s proposal that the union organize a system of peer review for teachers rather than teachers submitting to performance reviews by supervisors and consumers.

By becoming a self-policing group, the NEA hopes to avert legislation like Florida’s recently approved "A+" plan which sets up a consumer-based system for improving poor-performing schools. More important, the NEA does not want other states to offer Florida’s vanguard plan that guarantees parents "opportunity scholarships" allowing them to send their child to the public or private school of their choice if their child’s school fails state standards two years in a row.

The saddest part of Chase’s tenure is that he has cheated our nation’s professional educators out of three years in which they could have sought real reform in the government schools. If Chase really believes in education reform, why doesn’t he support any and all types of reform that help children, such as charter schools, merit pay for good teachers, and eliminating poor-performing teachers from the classroom?

Bob Chase would do well to realize that we in the American public are his customers. If he wants real reform for government schools, he must identify concrete and measurable standards of academic achievement. Just as important, he should then identify the steps necessary for achieving those goals.

Our children are the future of this nation. They deserve more than platitudes from those who direct the future of government education.

Bob Williams is President of and Senior Research Analyst for the Evergreen Freedom Foundation.

Contact: Bob Williams (360) 956-3482

Evergreen Freedom Foundation P.O. Box 552, Olympia, WA 98507 Phone: (360) 956-3482, Fax: (360) 352-1874 Email: effwa@effwa.org