Reports from the NEA by EIA

...the President [in his phone call to the NEA delegates] gave a hint as to how he will handle education issues in the campaign and deal with lingering dissatisfaction from a significant portion of the union.
The President emphasized the funding for teachers’ jobs in the stimulus bill, and the additional funding in the follow-on “edujobs” bill. He didn’t mention Race to the Top, Arne Duncan, charter schools, performance pay, or really any policy issue. And he took a swipe at Mitt Romney, saying, “My opponent mocks the idea that we need more teachers.”
As NEA campaigns for Obama, it will stick to the same emphasis: funding and the vulnerabilities of Romney. Addressing the other issues will wait until after the election… probably to no effect, but what else can NEA do?
The President signed off with “I’m looking forward to seeing you guys on the campaign trail.” To which NEA president Dennis Van Roekel responded, “We’re behind you all the way.” I think part of the frustration is that the union has been behind him, instead of in front of his face. ------Educational Intelligence Agency at the NEA.

Somehow I missed getting Mike Antonucci's reports from the NEA last week. Mike certainly nailed the Obama approach to teachers this year. Mike comes from the right with an anti-union bias but he does some excellent coverage. If you heard about the drastic drop in members of the NEA last week for the first time you would have known that a long time ago from reading EIA. I don't find many offensive items here but some people on the left get incensed when I post his stuff. I've been doing that even in the old pre-2006 print editions of Ed Notes and will continue to do so.

Mike focuses more on the NEA than the AFT. I sat with him in the press section at the 2004 AFT convention and we had some great conversations. (It was funny to see AFT officials sucking up to him.) That was the only time I met him. Here are the links to his reports.

Direct Links to All NEA Convention Blog Posts. In case you didn't follow along all last week with EIA's gavel-to-gavel coverage of the 2012 National Education Association Representative Assembly from Washington DC, here are the direct links to each post, in chronological order. Enjoy!

 

*  NEA Convention 2012: "We Have to Change." Seventy staffers cut and down $65 million, the delegates seem most worried about a virtual meeting for the resolutions committee.

*  NEA: "No Evidence" Teach for America Busts Unions. Judging by reader response, this was my biggest scoop of the week.

*  NEA Convention 2012: The Missing. Worst snub of the convention wasn't by President Obama.

*  NEA Convention 2012: Outside the Lines. Where once again I shirk my journalistic responsibility.

*  Biden: Romney Bad, Teachers Good. What else is there to say?

*  NEA Convention 2012: America's Greatest Education Governor Not So Great at Math. Minnesota governor's "real" numbers are imaginary.

*  Obama to Phone It In on Thursday. You know, they did have an Obama impersonator on hand. Hmmm...

*  More on Gov. Dayton's Math. Check your numbers... at the door.

*  NEA Convention 2012: Delegates to Take Up the Hot Issue of Hotel Cable Channel Selection, At least until peer pressure led to its withdrawal.

*  NEA Convention 2012: Social Justice Patriots. Demagoguing the 4th from the Left is no better than doing it from the Right.

*  NEA Convention 2012: NBI Smackdown. Delegates learn what life is like for California taxpayers.

*  NEA Convention 2012: Obama Coming In Garbled. Thank God for closed captioning.

*  A Financial Note for RA Delegates. Where those spending estimates come from.

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The Education Intelligence Agency conducts public education research, analysis and investigations. E-Mail: mike@eiaonline.com