When the National Education Association was forced this past
April to take control of its South Carolina affiliate, local and
national media outlets — including Education Week, the
sector’s publication of record — gave it much play. But for the
nation’s largest teachers union, it proved to be another
embarrassing fall of one of its once-powerful affiliates.
Even as the South Carolina Education Association spent
$50,000 between 2005 and 2007 to oppose school voucher plans and
maintain traditional public education, the NEA unit was losing
money and membership in droves. Once representing 44 percent of
the Palmetto State’s 39,000 teachers a decade ago, the SCEA lost
nearly 10,000 members (or more than half its rank-and-file)
between 1994 and 2009 — even as the state added 10,000 new
teachers during that period. Despite efforts to revamp itself —
including plans to use Web-based teleconferencing for meetings —
the local was weakened by its own incompetence and the presence
of an independent teachers group.
By the time the NEA took it over, the SCEA was dependent on
$800,000 in funding from national headquarters to cover its
expenses. Since the takeover, the NEA hasn’t exactly done much to
shed light on the affiliate’s problems. SCEA members only got
official word of the takeover this week in a column inside
Emphasis, the union’s in-house publication. In a fit of
understatement, the normally-fiery Mike Antonucci — whose
Education Intelligence Agency is as widely-reviled among union
presidents as merit pay plans — opined that the disclosure was:
“Better late than never.”
For the NEA, which also manages the day-to-day operations
of its now-busted Indiana affiliate, the SCEA’s decline may also
be a harbinger of its own future.
The much-needed reform of America’s abysmal public school
systems, along with the current economic recession and long-term
civil
servant pension deficits, is making it difficult for the NEA
and the much-smaller American Federation of Teachers to defend
and justify the traditional system of near-lifetime employment,
defined-benefit
pensions, employer-subsidized healthcare plans, job
protections and degree- and seniority-based pay scales they have
won on behalf of their rank-and-file. The
consensus that teacher compensation fails to reward
high-quality instruction and keeps laggard teachers in their jobs
also weakens the NEA’s cause. A generational divide between Baby
Boomers and younger instructors over layoff policies and the
direction of public education, is also wreaking havoc.
But it is a spate of financial scandals and long-term
missteps among NEA locals that may do most to damage confidence
in the union among the very teachers who have long-sustained its
coffers. As a result, teachers may find themselves revisiting the
grand bargain they struck with the union of lending their support
for (and acquiescence of) its aims in exchange for better pay and
conditions.
WITH 3.2 MILLION MEMBERS WORKING IN most of America’s
schools, the NEA still menacingly wields its ability to mobilize
forces outside statehouses (to the delight of local television
stations and newspaper reporters) and inside classrooms (where
members bond with parents who can advocate on the union’s
behalf). Through its state and local affiliates, the NEA is also
the single-biggest donor in American politics, with $52 million
in campaign donations made to local, state and congressional
campaigns during the 2007-2008 election cycle. This heft, along
with its longstanding role in Democratic Party politics, is one
reason why President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats are
chatting up a proposed
$23 billion “stimulus” plan to help school districts stave
off layoffs.
Its $377 million in (often forcibly-collected) dues revenue
— more than the $344 million collected by the Service Employees
International Union — gives it the ability to wield
influence within traditional education circles. The American
Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, the trade group
for the nation’s university colleges of education, received
$252,262 from the NEA in the 2008-2009 fiscal year, according to
the union’s filing with the U.S. Department of Labor. Its efforts
at influencing education policy have extended beyond the
classrooms of school districts, with the NEA using his coffers to
help fund left-leaning groups such as the infamous ACORN (to the
tune of $396,452).
But these days, that influence is doing the NEA little
good.
From enacting new curricula standards to school choice
measures such as charter schools, the NEA has been bested by the
coterie of centrist Democrats, conservatives, libertarians and
idiosyncratic left-learners who make up the school reform
movement. The fact that Democrats — including prominent liberals
such as Green Dot Schools founder (and Rock the Vote cofounder)
Steve Barr — are also some of the most-prominent backers of
school reform means that the NEA can no longer count on the
Democratic National Committee for unquestioned support.
Obama’s embrace of most of the school reform agenda first
articulated by predecessors Bill Clinton and George W. Bush isn’t
music to NEA ears. The president has further aroused NEA ire
thanks to the $4.3 billion Race to the Top initiative, which
offers states to compete for at least $20 million in federal
stimulus funds if they embrace reform measures as the use of
student test score data in assessing teacher performance — which
it think subjects their members to unfair performance evaluations
— and ditch laws that ban such uses. Although the NEA has taken
advantage of Race to the Top’s emphasis on consensus to stave off
the most-path-breaking of reform measures, its affiliates —
especially those in California, Illinois and
Colorado — have lost battles to reform of teacher
performance management.
The current economic recession battering state and school
district budgets has the NEA struggling to defend traditional
teacher compensation, which has provided teachers with the
ability to retire as early as age 50 (some 15 years earlier that
private-sector workers) with lifetime annuities of as much as $2
million and free healthcare perks. The fact that states are
wrestling with at least $650 billion (and likely, $1 trillion or
more) in long-term pension deficits and retirement underfunding
generated from these arrangements puts the NEA’s defense of the
system in a less-endearing light. So does a spate of layoffs,
which involve the use of reverse seniority (or last hired-first
fired) layoff policies that protect Baby Boomers (who make up 36
percent of all teachers) at the expense of younger, hungrier
instructors.
THESE PROBLEMS AREN’T JUST a threat to the NEA’s underlying
ideology that teachers should be the dominant force in education
decision-making. It also threatens the NEA’s bottom line. At the
heart of the relationship between the union and its rank-and-file
is a grand bargain of sorts, with teachers — many of whom as
likely to vote Republican as Democrat — supporting the NEA’s
political aims (and generously paying dues) almost
wholeheartedly. In return, the union puts out the stops to
protect long-serving teachers from layoffs, give teachers a
stronger voice in school and district decisions, and assure them
of perks such as workdays in which the actual time for teaching
children is often less than the eight hours worked.
Starting in the 1960s, when states began requiring school
districts to bargain with NEA affiliates (and those of the AFT),
this deal worked out most-splendidly. The deal got better by the
late 1990s as class size reduction efforts increased the size of
the nation’s teaching corps. This contributed to the NEA’s dues
growth while
reducing the average class size for elementary school
teachers from 26.2 students to 21.1. By 2007, for example, 25
percent of Michigan teachers and other school employees retire
before age 55 while 64 percent leave before reaching 60,
according to an analysis by the Detroit News.
But these days, the NEA’s political losses, along with the
advent of a younger generation of teachers less willing to buy
into the union’s creed, is forcing members to wonder about the
value of their membership. The high cost of NEA membership, even
as school districts lay off teacher and freeze salary increases,
may also cause some to pause.
But it’s a series of scandals and miscues among NEA locals
— and how the union’s national leadership has dealt with them —
that may serve as the klaxon for teachers everywhere.
Last year, the NEA was forced to take control of the
Indiana
State Teachers Association after the affiliate’s Voluntary
Employee Benefit Association went insolvent amid a $67 million
deficit and alleged financial mismanagement. The 50,000 members
covered under the plan were miffed that ISTA didn’t admit the
failure until the day it announced the NEA takeover; they were
disgusted after the parent union successfully increased their
$449 annual dues by another $40 in order to cover the insolvency.
Four members have state and federal class action suits pending
against the union and the NEA demanding recovery of damages
(federal and state investigations are also ongoing).
In Hawaii, the insurance division of the NEA affiliate
there was forced to file for liquidation after failing to fully
report its income to the state and the Internal Revenue Service.
Despite being overseen by a board appointed by the affiliate’s
leadership, the NEA local
admitted that the HSTA Member Benefit Corp. was “grossly
mismanaged” to the point of owing $400,000 in back taxes and
interest. Hawaii’s state legislative auditor also complained that
an insurance trust managed by the union didn’t provide
documentation needed for analysis in its annual report.
The collapse of the NEA’s South Carolina affiliate may be
illustrative of how teachers may organize themselves in the
future. Even as the union lost members, the Palmetto State Teachers
Association has grown as a strong presence in the state.
Unlike the NEA, the association proclaims that it eschews
collective bargaining (likely because South Carolina is one of
the
easiest states to attain
near-lifetime employment through tenure, with just two years
of time on the job). It also touts the fact that its members were
named state Teacher of the Year for 14 of the last 15
years.
Certainly the NEA will remain an influential force in
public education for the time being. But the future may be darker
than the skin of a salamander.
