Why the Largest Teachers Union Puts Its Staff First and Education Second
Lloyd, Bill Boyton, John
Why the Largest Teachers Union Puts Its Staff First and Education Second By Bill Boyton and John Lloyd It's hard to think of a national problem that has provoked more debate than public...
...Of the 11 states slated for priority attention and NEA "action money" in 1983, eight were on the list solely because the AFT was expected to wage membership challenges that year...
...education policy and research became a career backwater...
...but in practice they have come increasingly under the influence of the NEA staff...
...Reluctantly, we had to acknowledge that the NEA often gives its teacher-members a bad name...
...All teachers would receive a pay raise of $1,000...
...But what about public education...
...The average field staff member gets $51,000 in base pay and a standard benefits package worth $25,000...
...they are more concerned about doing their jobs better...
...Despite some reservations, 71 percent say merit pay schemes would work "if there were an objective standard on which a teacher's individual merit could be judged !' It would be hard to guess any of this from the lobbying efforts of the NEA...
...And if teachers' unions spent less time fighting one another and more time addressing problems in the classroom, then they'd probably receive more support from the taxpayers...
...It's by far the most difficult thing I've done in my life," Alexander said after the fight...
...We responded with slogans like, "You can't eat professionalism...
...A state judge levied fines that, by the end of the strike, were as high as $1,500 a day in individual cases...
...Like the cavalry of yesteryear, NEA staff members—including some from other parts of the country—thundered into town to provide reinforcement...
...The Arizona legislature is considering a bill that would open the teaching profession to more talented people...
...While the national organization holds great sway over the states, state-level staff tend to manipulate local elected union officials...
...Many now enjoy full leave from their teaching responsibilities and looser restrictions on the number of years they can serve...
...According to a study by Harvard University researcher Susan Moore Johnson, teachers think their local unions have improved salaries and job conditions...
...The teachers walked out, but with only moderate enthusiasm...
...At a three-day meeting in Scottsdale, Arizona in 1983, which we attended, the western state directors spent an entire afternoon discussing how to circumvent their elected superiors...
...Uniserv" staff do not officially report to Washington, but they know their advancement depends on Washington's opinion of their work...
...and Detroit...
...The staff does—as much to serve its own interests as the aspirations of teachers and the cause of educational reform...
...A 1984 Lou Harris poll of teachers found that 84 percent of the respondents favor changes that would make it easier to fire incompetent teachers, while 57 percent endorse periodic teacher competency tests...
...Knaves and naivete The influence of the staff within the NEA has had a great effect upon relations between teachers and their schools...
...Like our counterparts in the AFT, we used smears and distortions to make the competition look bad...
...For months before the 1984 Representative Assembly—the NEA's annual convention—the organization was divided over whether to endorse Mondale formally or to give him an informal pledge of support...
...On occasion, staff have helped hasten the arrival of a more cooperative replacement...
...We looked with distaste upon the AFT's union-style organizing tactics...
...The Arkansas Education Association, for example, is working for repeal of a plan enacted last year establishing a special $663 million educational excellence fund on the condition that all public school teachers take basic competency exams...
...Working in "flying squadrons," we were on the road virtually full time from September to June, trying to add more teachers to our ranks...
...As part-time officials, they had to trust the staff to conduct daily-business...
...By mail vote, the NEA endorsed Mondale—but half of the teachers in the country voted for Reagan, according to a CBS News exit poll...
...The inflated staff salaries did not arise by accident...
...A Harris poll found that 84 percent of teachers think it should be easier to fire incompetent teachers...
...After 15 days, the board finally relented, and the press declared the teachers the winners...
...VanderVeen wasn't an exception...
...In fact, the NEA has been the single biggest obstacle to educational reform in this country...
...The staffers also impersonated "concerned parents" who supported the teachers in comments to the press...
...The individual in question had built up so much severance pay that the local would have gone bankrupt by dismissing him...
...You wonder," says Chester Finn, professor of education at Vanderbilt University, "how long the NEA membership will tolerate a leadership that defies the views of teachers and tarnishes the image of the profession at the same time...
...A teaching associate program that attracts independent-minded liberal arts graduates or 20-year IBM veterans could make organizing and recruitment that much more difficult, the organization fears...
...Today, teachers still need an organization to enable them to deal with their employers on equal terms...
...There were no more school bells, brown bag lunches, and homeroom duties...
...Mobilizing its rank-and-file to descend upon the state legislature, the Tenessee Education Association succeeded in watering down the bill almost beyond recognition...
...They rarely cause much trouble...
...In the last few years, elected NEA officials in some states have tried to reassert themselves...
...The Arizona Education Association opposes any assault on the teacher certification orthodoxy, however...
...At times, staff are openly contemptuous of teachers and their "naive" political views...
...Through it all, the NEA staff ignored the many teachers who wanted to call off the strike...
...If attention alone could solve problems, classrooms would be running smoothly now...
...The AFT was especially successful in large cities, causing the NEA's influential urban faction to demand retaliation...
...Leaving the organization was not an easy decision...
...The NEA now denies the episode, but we found it entirely believable in light of our experience in the AFT wars...
...You can't blame the NEA for defending itself...
...Some teachers were put off by our aggressiveness...
...For the former teachers who had proved their mettle in local organizing, joining the national staff was a heady experience...
...But we had put them there in the first place...
...The Arizona director actually stood up and apologized for having regularly passed along such memos to his boss and promised to stop doing so...
...by the strike's third day, many had abandoned the picket lines...
...Their salaries are paid in part by the national organization and in part by the state affiliates...
...As the Mondale endorsement showed, the NEA staff frequently is less than respectful of the views of their members...
...Similarly, the NEA expelled its Florida affiliate when it joined with its AFT counterpart and set up a new union to try to win these teachers back...
...You teach...
...Teachers had been underpaid and treated shabbily for decades...
...Mergers This union warfare makes no sense from the teachers' standpoint, either...
...The teachers weren't so amused...
...As in the schools, the administrators generally held the upper hand...
...States with the greatest educational needs do not necessarily receive the most attention from the NEA because fighting the AFT comes first...
...In the annals of labor history, we would take a place beside the Flint strikers and the Wobblies...
...At the time, the change seemed necessary, even desirable...
...We weren't going to let them win the war...
...The organization had never endorsed a presidential candidate prior to its backing Jimmy Carter in 1976, and the membership was still uneasy about the idea...
...Then, in the early sixties, the NEA underwent a radical change...
...Until a few years ago, elected NEA officials weren't permitted to take full leave from teaching to serve the union...
...Throw in healthy expense accounts and frequent travel, and you've got "hog heaven for an old classroom teacher," as one of our colleagues once put it...
...But they were working...
...In the sixties, these conditions had passed the point of endurance...
...When the NEA has supported innovations, they have generally reflected the institutional interests of the organization rather than the needs of students and teachers...
...One reason is that such a change could hinder union recruiting efforts...
...The negotiations, organizing, and legal affairs departments emerged as the fast tracks...
...They thought we had done them a great service by getting them out of jail and helping to pay their fines...
...At the same time, the bill would have revised the state's tenure system, which makes firing incompetent teachers extremely difficult...
...Her sensible view was that teachers on the front lines know better than staff what changes are needed in the schools...
...One mechanism of control is the "Unified Services Program," a staff-sharing arrangement that functions as Washington's pipeline to the state organizations...
...Too bad none of them were teachers ." The national staff, in effect, works on commission...
...Many in the NEA leadership anticipated the AFT's launching a nationwide onslaught...
...When locals of the two unions merged in Los Angeles in 1970, teachers found themselves in a much stronger position to get things done...
...The NEA had been the focus for our idealism and sense of mission for many years...
...Male staff members—especially those who travel frequently —revel in tales of sexual exploits involving female teachers...
...in June 1983, Gary Watts, formerly director of these field staff members and a devout Morman, expressed his anguished view that the largest problem facing the organization was the number of men "dipping their pens in the company inkwell ." Moles Since the representation battles of the sixties, the NEA has spent an inordinate amount of time combating its rival, the American Federation of Teachers, which represents about a third as many teachers...
...The decision to endorse Walter Mondale in the 1984 Democratic primaries is a case in point...
...But the seniority clause the teachers finally won wasn't much of an improvement over the old one...
...The NEA recruits heavily at state teacher colleges, where it can appeal to large numbers of impressionable young people at one time...
...John Lloyd and Bill Boyton are former executive directors of the NEA state affiliates in Kansas and Nebraska, respectively...
...We don't know about the AFT, but the NEA was not above acts of questionable legality, either...
...Frequently, staff were dealing with novices who were dependent on their counsel...
...The battle of New York left a lasting scar...
...Currently Tennessee teachers, like those in most states, receive a salary based solely on their seniority and academic degrees...
...We haven't had the year-by-year bitterness," says Frances Haywood of the United Teachers of Los Angeles...
...In addition, elected officials could serve only a certain number of terms, and often no more than one year...
...Now the local Unisery staff director of the Salt Lake Teacher's Association, she denies that any of this occurred...
...The NEA leadership was eager to throw the full weight of the organization behind Mondale...
...We've been asking the same question...
...The new agency brought under one roof a number of existing federal programs, but it has had no apparent impact on the daily lives of classroom teachers and students...
...In 1983 Lamar Alexander, governor of Tennessee, proposed an ambitious package of reforms that centered upon a "career ladder" for teachers...
...Furthermore, some elected officials develop a taste for the NEA lifestyle and aspire to join the staff themselves once they leave office...
...Generous salaries didn't dampen anyone's spirits, either...
...If other union locals followed the Los Angeles example, teachers might get better representation...
...Gradually, many teachers began to see our efforts in the larger context of sixties activism...
...They served us more than we served them...
...Still, these officials have had only limited success...
...A former colleague of ours estimates that the NEA spent $25 million of its $400 million budget last year on "Fed fighting" As state staff members, we spent upwards of 60 percent of our time jousting with the AFT for teacher loyalty...
...But they aren't...
...The proposed bill would enable talented people to work for a year as "teaching associates" under close supervision and then become eligible for full teacher status...
...Two examples: • Merit pay...
...Since most staff want to climb the ladder, Washington generally prevails when policy differences arise...
...The organizing drives also caused changes within the NEA...
...Until last year, when we quit, both of us held top positions as executive directors of state NEA affiliates...
...Rather than build on the better instincts of its members, the NEA generally has resisted state-level reform...
...Yet, when NEA and AFT affiliates merged in New York state in 1972, the NEA tried to counter the move by setting up a rival organization...
...Many classroom teachers want to be on the side of change...
...Another staff member observed that "the teachers movement . ..made a lot of people rich...
...But you can blame it for not showing some statesmanship and making a genuine effort to resolve these hostilities...
...You people don't know the first fucking thing about organizing," he would roar at proteges sitting at his feet...
...At present, you can't become a teacher in Arizona if you haven't taken special courses in educational theory and methodology, regardless of your college record or other valuable experience...
...For one thing, the state staffs have won contractual rights of their own, such as protections against dismissal and performance evaluations...
...Standards for the merit ladder were muddied, and quotas for the top rungs were abolished: Firing incompetent teachers may be as difficult as before...
...When a local official does show some independence, the staff can just sit tight until that individual returns to the classroom...
...In one instance, an NEA local wanted to fire a Unisery staff member but couldn't...
...The watershed came in 1960, when the AFT won the right to represent New York City's 119,000 teachers...
...Separated from one another, they would be much less likely to mount a challenge to the leadership's recommendation...
...That's why we knew it was time to leave...
...You don't know what a real job is," a school board chairman once snarled during a contract negotiation...
...As the end of VanderVeen's one-year term approached, these staff members spread damaging rumors to diminish her chances of reelection...
...These Howard Hunt routines—indeed, the millions of dollars the two unions spend battling one another—do not advance the cause of educating our children by one iota...
...With 1.7 million members, the NEA is the nation's largest labor organization and could be a mighty force for constructive change...
...Why the Largest Teachers Union Puts Its Staff First and Education Second By Bill Boyton and John Lloyd It's hard to think of a national problem that has provoked more debate than public education...
...But we finally realized that in its present state, teachers don't run the NEA...
...We are freed up to get on with the business of negotiating contracts and lobbying the state legislature...
...VanderVeen lost...
...You'd never know it from the positions of the NEA...
...In Nebraska, for example, June VanderVeen, a newly elected state organization president, wanted classroom teachers, not professional staff, to sit on state educational policy bodies...
...At a closed-door meeting in Washington, D.C...
...Reform support Many classroom teachers have virtually no interest in the contention between the AFT and the NEA...
...In theory, state affiliates, such as the Nebraska State Education Association and Kansas-NEA, are autonomous...
...The two had worked their way up through the ranks and had even run for top elective offices...
...He told us that the only way we could get administrators to take us seriously was to escalate the conflict—threaten to strike, mount one if the threat didn't work, and take any other steps necessary to put pressure on the other side...
...Teachers with families—like ourselves— commonly moonlighted to make ends meet...
...They were a symptom of a fundamental shift in the balance of power within the NEA...
...We found similar effects of staff influence in the political arena...
...Alinsky preached a rough-and-ready credo and urged confrontation over conciliation...
...Yet 60 percent of the professional staff members at the national level are men, and men hold 90 percent of the state staff jobs...
...A quarter of the NEA's 6,000 staff members belong to "Uniserv...
...In other words, teachers want fair pay and treatment, but they also want to work in an atmosphere of cooperation rather than hostility...
...The idea seemed so simple—rewarding outstanding teachers" ("The Day the PTA Stayed Home," Hope Aldrich, June 1984 ). The Lou Harris poll found that 87 percent of the teachers interviewed support a career ladder plan...
...But one of us (Bill Boyton) was acting executive director in Nebraska at the time and saw it happen...
...Some state staff members tried to undercut VanderVeen by excluding her from important meetings and failing to inform her of pending legislative business...
...They want to work in schools they can be proud of...
...Teachers became increasingly absorbed in the minutiae of contract rights...
...If they didn't, they wouldn't have become teachers...
...Opening up the profession...
...Flying Squadrons Many of the gains achieved through confrontation were long overdue, yet you could sense the problems that lay down the road...
...Had the undercover plot succeeded, the NEA would have gained an inside track on AFT planning and strategy...
...Our friend told us he was shocked that the committee had not demanded resignations from the officials responsible for this unethical conduct...
...The composition of the staff and membership helps explain this condescension...
...NEA affiliates in some states banished administrators permanently...
...There was some support for the idea that staff should withhold key memos...
...Hostility and distrust descended over the bargaining table...
...Some teachers, moreover, supported Gary Hart...
...NEA staff played a major role in orchestrating the walkout...
...So the staff proposed a return to the system used in 1976, when the vote was conducted by mail after the delegates had gone home...
...But NEA officials fear that enabling teachers to gain pay increases by their own efforts will diminish the union's middleman role as hard-nosed negotiator...
...While the captains came and went, the crew ran the ship...
...When Massachusetts Teachers Association staff arrived to conduct negotiations, they urged the teachers to strike, in part to advance a top NEA legislative priority that year—a mandatory binding arbitration clause for all teacher contracts in the state...
...The Washington mole had his campaign literature printed at NEA headquarters on 16th Street, not far from the AFT...
...The NEA was also starting to feel competition from the American Federation of Teachers, which had mounted an aggressive organizing campaign and was taking away some of our members...
...We gained a sense of authority and independence...
...We had a good laugh...
...Alinsky set the tone for the relations that have since evolved between teachers and the people who run the schools...
...The NEA has also opposed other reforms, such as testing teachers for competency...
...Real organizing was new for the NEA...
...Lasting scar Chartered by Congress in 1857, the National Education Association functioned for more than a century as a staid professional society for school administrators as well as teachers...
...We know because we worked for the NEA...
...Contrary to public perception, most classroom teachers support efforts to improve teaching quality, even at the expense of their own job security...
...Representation battles do not always bring out the best in people...
...Perhaps more galling than the financial hardship was the lack of respect for our work...
...When teacher salaries go up, the national organization takes a cut, regardless of whether it really needs the additional money...
...The judge also sent 67 teachers to jail...
...Since those members are classroom teachers, one might reasonably expect to find the NEA at the front of the crusade for educational reform...
...From 1966 to 1976, our membership nearly doubled...
...What the department did was provide NEA officials with additional visibility in Washington, a cabinet secretary to speak at their conventions, and new career paths through the federal bureaucracy...
...But Moore found that teachers also worry that the unions have polarized relations with administrators and protected classroom incompetence...
...Last year, a member of the NEA executive committee told us that he had been informed, in a closed-door session, that the organization had planted moles inside AFT locals in Washington, D.C...
...School boards weren't prepared for our hard-nosed tactics, and we won unprecedented settlements...
...When one of us objected strenuously to the drift of this discussion, he was ignored...
...Worried that declining enrollments would cause layoffs, the Franklin teachers had pressed for stronger seniority protection...
...One way to answer that question is to look at the organizations that are in the best position to improve public schooling—the National Education Association, for example...
...but heftier increases of $4,000 and $8,000 would go to teachers whose classroom performance qualified them for "senior" or "master" status, respectively...
...Women make up two-thirds of the NEA membership...
...NEA dues are based on a fixed percentage of the average annual salary of an NEA classroom teacher...
...Pay and pride Twenty years ago, teachers needed to organize to get the pay and respect due them, just as autoworkers and brakemen had to organize earlier in the century...
...The white gloves came off, the influence of administrators dropped, and the organization became a teachers' union, concerned primarily with pay and other bread-and-butter contractual issues...
...Some of the others fled town or went into hiding...
...The NEA gave us a way to fight back against the school boards and administrators—and now we had Washington behind us...
...The union hired Saul Alinsky, the legendary community organizer from Chicago, to fly around the country and show the staff how to get the job done...
...An example was the teachers' strike in Franklin, Massachusetts in 1977, which received national media coverage...
...How am I going to rationalize it to the people who really work for a living why you want a salary increase...
...Today, a new NEA professional-level staff member makes nearly $20,000 more than a beginning teacher...
...But their union does not...
...Even the NEA's own in-house policy research unit has expressed guarded support for such plans...
...The local papers portrayed the school board as the bad guys for pressing the jailings...
...Take, for example, the Department of Education, which Jimmy Carter promised the NEA in exchange for the union's endorsement in 1976...
...These teaching associates would still have to take roughly half the courses now required for a teacher's certificate, but they could spread these courses over the first few years of teaching...
...In fact, NEA staff have more job security than the teachers...
...But they were wary of provoking a floor fight during the Assembly that would show division and dilute the value of the endorsement...
Vol. 17 • May 1985 • No. 4
