NEA President says NEA will deemphasize collective bargaining & concentrate on 'teaching quality'
This morning retirees listened to speeches by VP Lily Eskelsen and NEA President Dennis Van Roekel. I posted on Facebook about DVR’s remarks. And it has caused something of a stir as my short remarks were reposted and reposted.
Some have asked me for a written transcript. I don’t have one because there is none. I only have my memory of what DVR said. I asked many others in the hall if they heard what I heard.
And, for the most part, they did.
Some who I asked differed over interpretation.
Yet here is what I heard DVR say: That with the defeat of collective bargaining in states like Michigan and Wisconsin, the NEA will focus less on those kind of issues and focus more on issues of teaching quality, particularly the implementation of the Common Core.
He was quite aggressive in his advocacy of the Common Core, throwing down the challenge to those on the Right and the Left who have been critical of it. DVR said that if you have nothing better to offer, step back.
It is for DVR to speak and explain what he means by his statements about collective bargaining. There was not nearly enough explanation in his speech to retirees. But I have been told by those who have been involved in talks at the national level that this will be a recurring theme at this RA and after.
The theme being that the NEA must be seen as the leading advocate of quality, as opposed to a defender of the status quo.
That this echoes the attacks on teacher unions by those like Chicago’s Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel is apparently lost on DVR and the NEA top brass.
After over a decade of No Child Left Behind, Races to the Top and demands for accountability that have been turned into nothing less than witch hunts of teachers, who is the defender of the status quo?
And why on earth would the President of the nation’s largest union pit collective bargaining against quality?
http://preaprez.wordpress.com/2013/06/30/quality-control-at-the-nea-ra/
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