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Dr. Reg Weaver
NEA President
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| "Delegates representing you at the 2006 RA poured their energy into shaping NEA's agenda for the upcoming year and beyond. Team NEA, great public schools depend on all of us – educators, parents, community leaders, and members of Congress – and none of us should be making any excuses for not living up to that task." |
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RA Action:
News from the NEA Annual Meeting
July 3, 2006
Charting Tomorrow’s Course
We, The Members.
Using language echoing the preamble to the U.S. Constitution, the Representative Assembly has approved a vision, mission, and core values for the Association. Sunday's historic vote will help guide NEA members in a common direction in the years to come.
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| NEA Mission Statement Committee members, front row left to right: Lily Eskelsen, Anna-Maria Halstead, Dr. Craig Ham, Delores Harvey and David Theisen. In back are Greg Johnson, left and Rob Gardner at the NEA National Education Association Annual Meeting/Representative Assembly at the Orange County Convention Center, Sunday, July 2, 2006 in Orlando, Florida. RA Today/Rick Runion |
NEA Secretary-Treasurer Lily Eskelsen chaired the committee that shaped the final draft of the vision, mission, and core values after receiving input from thousands of NEA members nationwide. Speaking to the RA Sunday, she called the approved document "not so much a change in our identity, but a clearer articulation of it—in words so clear that members, potential members, and the public will know exactly what it means to be a member of the NEA.
"The NEA is a very complex organization when seen as a national office with a loose confederation of semi-independent state affiliates and the voting power of 2.8 million members," Eskelsen said. "Today, we face a world changing at unprecedented speed. Public education is under attack like never before [and] we must find the right organizational and strategic approach to meet the challenges before us."
The NEA Tomorrow Review Committee, made up of one representative from each of NEA's six regions took the podium to articulate the vision—"a great public school for every student"; the mission statement—to advocate for education professionals and to unite our members and the nation to fulfill the promise of public education to prepare every student to succeed in a diverse and interdependent world; and core values—including equal opportunity, a just society, democracy, professionalism, partnership, and collective action.
"All members in this wonderful organization can see themselves in these words," said Craig Ham, Southeast representative.
Advocating for members, explained Ham, means "fighting for what our members need to do to do their jobs. That's everything from professional pay to a class size that maximizes learning, to bringing sanity to NCLB."
Preparing students to succeed, Ham added, means "more than drilling for a test and it's more than a paycheck. No matter what paths they choose in life, they need to know how to work as a team."
Collective action is valued "not just as a defensive action, but as an offense," said David Theisen, the Pacific representative. "To create our future, not just react to what others do."
The core values do more than just spell out priorities for everything the Association does, added Northeast representative Dolores Harvey. They "tell what's in our hearts—they tell others who we are. We have never articulated these values before, but they are key to knowing how we intend to accomplish our work."
One such value—partnership—reflects the importance of working with groups that share common values, a goal made easier by having articulated a clear sense of purpose. Partnerships with parents and community stakeholders, said Theisen, represent "more than a strategy. It is a core value. We cannot accomplish our mission alone, no matter how good our programs, facilities, and resources."
"There is power in partnership, collective bargaining, and political action," Theisen adds.
Anna-Maria Halstead, the Mid-Atlantic representative, actually penned an A-Z tribute to the mission and core values. Consider the letters I and J: "We must ensure that we are truly viewed as integral parts of our interdependent world and just society."
—Mark Toner
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"My Money Is On Us"
The RA opens with an upbeat call to action from the podium.
In a rousing RA kickoff, President Reg Weaver struck back at the growing clamor of critics of public education and extolled delegates to gear up for a fight on the frontlines, in the classroom, and for the resources that will ensure great public schools for every child.
"There are three new 'Rs' in education,' Weaver cried, raising such a spirited response that the auditorium's fire alarms joined the chorus. "In addition to reading, writing, and arithmetic, there is responsibility, respect, and results!"
With too many lawmakers imagining they know what it takes to teach, and too many opportunists plotting for privatization and vouchers, it's not going to be easy. Legislators don't pay up; parents don't show up; tests don't measure up, Weaver said. But, with the future at stake, there’s no room for failure, he added.
To that end, in the fight to put a great teacher in every classroom, Weaver called for a minimum salary of $40,000 for every teacher and a living wage for every support professional. It "isn't too much to ask," he said. He also called for an equitable funding structure that ensures, regardless of any student's zip code, ethnicity, or income, that all children receive "a free, quality, public education."
Weaver said educators welcome accountability, but not when they are excluded from decisions about how they do their own work. Education decisions get made, he said, when "Dr. So-and-So says that thus-and-so is what needs to happen. And, somehow, miraculously, we have a new theory. [But] in many instances, the theory depends on whom Dr. So-and-So knows, on what pre-conceived ideas Dr. So-and-So has—and, unfortunately, in many instances, depends on who's writing the check for Dr. So-and-So!"
"Want to hear my theory? Dr. So-and-So needs to get his so-and-so inside a classroom before he espouses thus-and-so about what constitutes good teaching!"
He said politicians and parents also must shoulder their responsibilities and be held accountable, along with educators. There’s no excuse for the achievement gaps between White and minority children, he said, and NEA must work together with minority communities to close them.
"Eighty-five percent of America's richest families send their children to public schools, because their public schools have qualified teachers and support staff, small class sizes, up-to-date textbooks and technology. Folks, if it's good enough for 85 percent of the richest, it's good enough for all!"
Earlier, Weaver reported to the assembly on the results of last year's demonstration at the RA in Los Angeles for the restoration of billions of dollars of California school funding, cut by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in violation of state law. The RA demonstration was the start of an intensive, grassroots campaign waged by the California Teachers Association and its pro-public education allies that won an agreement from the governor to restore all the money.
A New Business Item that won overwhelming support from delegates calls on NEA and its state affiliates to help protect the rights of all students to a quality public education, regardless of their national origin or immigration status.
"All children, regardless of where they're from, how they got here, or what language they speak when they arrive, have the right to a great public education," CTA President Barbara Kerr said. And, she added, "We all have the right to do our jobs... without fear that we will be labeled as felons."
In a packed day, RA delegates also:
—Mary Ellen Flannery & Alain Jehlen
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