Letter to the NEA

I sent this letter to the editor of the NEA Today earlier this month. I'll repost it here since I don't expect to see it in their Letters section.

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In the "What Now?" article in the January 2005 NEATODAY, our organization's leadership shows once again how they just don't get it. Three different quotes show this:

1) "NEA Republicans need to become very active in the GOP to change this...party..."
2) "NEA recommended 22 Republican hopefuls for the US House and Senate 'out of a total of 298 candidates'..."
3) "NEA Republicans, who comprise one-third of the Associaton (NEA) membership, need to become more active in the GOP..."

Perhaps NEA Republicans need to become more active in the NEA and help turn it from being little more than a shill for the Democrat Party.

Thank you again, Reg Weaver and the rest of the NEA leadership, for being so partisan, for putting all our eggs in the Democrat basket, that teachers can effectively be ignored by the Administration for another 4 years. Why should the Bush Administration listen to an organization that opposes its every move?

And lastly, quit carping about the NCLB Act. Despite it's few small flaws, it's shining a beacon of light on underperforming and nonperforming schools. For too long those schools, and the disproportionately minority students they served, were ignored by the government, by NEA, by everyone, while their students didn't learn. This law compels us to look at those children--those we claim we want to help the most--and find ways to teach them. I agreed with a quote of Reg Weaver's from another article in the same issue: "It's time to change the focus from defining the problem to doing something about it." That's exactly what NCLB does.