NEA Leans Left Because Liberals at the Top, Says Union Watchdog
by Jim Brown
October 10, 2005
(AgapePress) - A new survey of the 2.7-million-member National Education Association reveals that leaders of the powerful union are overwhelmingly liberal -- yet the rank and file reflects the political philosophies of the country at-large. Fifty percent of the rank-and-file NEA members identify themselves as either "conservative" or "tend conservative," and only 40 percent identify themselves as "liberal" or "tend liberal." However, presidents of the larger local NEA affiliates are 82 percent liberal and only 14 percent conservative.
Mike Antonucci is director of the Education Intelligence Agency, a union watchdog group that analyzed the survey. He notes most conservative members are not very active in the union.
"[A]bout a third of the total members aren't involved at all in the operations of the union. They have no knowledge of what the union's doing," Antonucci explains. "And that percentage goes up to 48 percent when you're talking about people who have been NEA members for three years or less." That indicates, he says, that "even amongst the newer teachers, you're going to find even more agnosticism about what the union is doing."
As to the philosophical disconnect between the NEA leaders and its members, Antonucci offers two reasons. "Much of the rank and file is not involved in the association," he explains, noting that that those who "show up" typically dictate an organization's direction. "[S]o the people who show up in the union tend to be liberal -- and therefore, the union tends to have liberal policies," he says.
And the second reason for the disconnect, he says, is that no matter what the people at the bottom of the organization's hierarchy want to do, "the cards are still stacked against them in terms of the union's policy."
In his seven-page report -- "The NEA Pyramid: The View Changes as You Rise to the Top of the Nation's Largest Union" [PDF] -- Antonucci asserts there are many lessons that can be learned about the NEA from member surveys. But the main lesson, he believes, is that the organization is not a "single-minded juggernaut" that is being "pushed along by willing acolytes." Instead, he explains, "it is more like a ship, with its officers all steering to port -- but with people at the oars capable of changing direction if they could only see outside."
He also says the NEA is able to frame arguments that it holds in a way that it can make policies appear to be attacks on teachers. As he puts it: "The best way [to get away with liberal policies] is to frame [them] in such a way as to make them relevant to the rank-and-file's expressed priority: security."
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
