OCR Text |
Show No Apple For the NEA By EDWIN FUELNEK Heritage Foundation The acronym NEA stands for the National Education Association, but to a lot of polilicans these days, it might as well stand for No Exceptions Allowed. That's because the NEA - which is, in case you didn't know, the largest teachers' union in the country -- has been consolidating its political power with great skill and vigor these last few years. On the national level, and in many states as well, it seems that what the NEA wants, the NEA gets. What the NEA wanted in 1976 was a federal Department of Education. political action committee PAC contributions to reward only those who voted for the Department of Education. Although the teachers' union gives official support to a phalanx of liberal causes, the PAC contributions even went to conservative con-servative Congressmen who went along with the NEA on this single issue. Liberal Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder, who opposed the DOE, complains, "On every other issue, I've been on the NEA's side, but they went nuts on this one." Nothing nutty about it -- the NEA simply wants to lay the groundwork for its next battle. This carefully organized political activism is practiced by the state chapters of NEA as well. In New Jersey, the NEA's power in state elections is legendary. Those targeted for defeat have usually been those who had committed the crime of favoring tax limitation. In Michigan, according to Professor Charles Van Eaton of Hillsdale College, the NEA is taking the position that "it alone should have the power to determine who enters the teaching profession and from what college they come, by considering con-sidering only those candidates from colleges that have the NEA as the bargaining unit representing faculty members." None of this is meant to disparage those many dedicated teachers who belong to their local NEA chapter. However, the national leadership seems to have less and less interest in the quality of basic education as time . goes on, and more and more interest -in political power, in limiting access to and accountability of their profession, and in trying to knock out the competition by whatever means are at hand. (I refer specifically to the NEA's staunch opposition to tuition tax credits and indeed to any measure that threatens its near-monopoly near-monopoly of the educational system and its bountiful federal funding. ) Let's hope that the next time the NEA comes calling, more of our political leaders will reply, ."Teacher, may I be excused?" |