By Anthony Cody. In May of 2011, as the NEA and AFT participated in planning a major protest of the Obama administration’s education policies, the NEA leadership announced they were endorsing President Obama for re-election, more than a year prior to the election in November, 2012. It was never revealed …
By Michelle Gunderson. This is the time of year when teachers start thinking about what the next school year will bring. We wonder what classes we will be given, what our students will be like, what joys and challenges we will face. Teaching is a profession that occupies the mind – teachers think about schooling …
(This post is part of a series related to the VIVA/NEA 360° Report. See an overview here.) By Nancy Kunsman. An email from National Education Association (NEA) president Lily Eskelson-Garcia in October invited NEA members to share our voices concerning best practices in education accountability. I tend to be …
(This post is part of a series related to the VIVA/NEA 360° Report. See an overview here.) By Rachel Rich. I felt like I had won the Teachers’ Schoolhouse Sweepstakes as I opened an invitation to an NEA survey on “360 Degree Accountability”. How often do teachers get asked for an opinion?! I was equally …
By Leah Putnam. If you participated in the 2012 Chicago Teachers Union Strike, you might recognize my sign (I’m the “union thug” holding it). After 10 years of teaching 5th grade for Chicago Public Schools, I recently moved to Indiana and began teaching 2nd grade. Moving from the third largest public school …
By Mary Porter. Diane Ravitch puts it this way: The American Federation of Teachers and the Center for American Progress issued a joint statement expressing their agreement on what should be contained in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (NCLB). The key point is that the AFT agreed …
By Renee Carlson, Janet Foster, Enid Hutchinson, Ed Kitlowski, Amanda Koonlaba, Nancy Kunsman, Justin McGehee, Lynn Otaguro, Joy Peters, Wendi Pillars, Rachel Rich, Petra Schmid-Riggins, Jim Strickland, Rebecca Gillespie, Jamyle Kathy Acevedo and Josh Thompson – members of the Viva/NEA 360° writing …
By John Thompson. Valerie Strauss does a great service for students and schools by showcasing the “small but growing number of teachers who are refusing to administer standardized tests that they think are harmful to their students and publicly explaining why they are doing so, sometimes at the risk of being …
By John Thompson. I do not question the sincerity of most former Obama administration officials and other liberals who support Vergara v California and its spawn. Some have long and loudly blamed teachers for education underperformance, saying that it is our “low expectations” and not the legacies of …
This week Mark Naison took an axe to the Peer Assistance and Review program, citing research done by Brian Crowell, a math teacher in Berkeley, California. Crowell states that his research has shown that teachers who are outspoken, and those who are over 55, are of color, and those who are expensive, are the ones …
