Education Leader Urges Teachers to Consider Alternatives to NEA
by Jim Brown
August 4, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A non-union conservative teacher's group says it is holding the National Education Association (NEA) accountable for its liberal agenda by offering state and local alternatives to that most powerful of America's teachers unions.
In response to the NEA's endorsement of homosexual "marriage" at its recent convention in Orlando, Florida, teachers have been fleeing the union for other groups, such as the Christian Educators Association International and the Association of American Educators (AAE). Tracey Bailey, the 1993 National Teacher of the Year and Director of Education Policy for the AAE, says tens of thousands of teachers have called his group to express their outrage over the NEA's political agenda.
At its Orlando meeting, the NEA approved a resolution to amend a section of its anti-discrimination policy handbook to include homosexual "marriage," where it states the union's belief that discrimination based on "race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identification ... must be eliminated." The delegates' adoption of this resolution is "just another step in their direction of promoting controversial social agendas like gay marriage and abortion," Bailey asserts, "and they've been doing it for decades now."
The liberal teachers union also has an abortion resolution on its books, the AAE official notes, one that has been there for 25 years now. That NEA measure "endorses school-based family planning clinics, making the range of services available to young people at school," he explains -- adding, "It's crazy."
Bailey says because AAE does not use members' dues for political activism, the alternative group is able to provide teachers with legal protection and benefits at a fraction of the cost of NEA dues. As for those members who feel they have no viable option to membership in the powerful national union, the award-winning teacher says those educators need to ask themselves what political issues and activism their dues are being used to support and how they feel about that personally and professionally.
"In many places," Bailey notes, "we're looking for young conservative teachers, for retirees who can help us set up alternatives so that teachers will have a choice." His group's desire, he explains, is to provide "a local choice" for teachers who object to the political direction the NEA has taken for years and its increasingly radical liberal agenda.
With a presence in those teachers' communities, the conservative group's head of education policy asserts, "there will be a conservative voice there to go to the school board and say not all teachers feel this way about these gay marriage issues or about some curriculum issues that the NEA has tried to push in the past."
It is not too late, Bailey contends, for disgruntled teachers to leave the NEA over its endorsement of issues like abortion and homosexual marriage. In fact, he says he encourages teachers who object to the union's political agenda to drop their membership before the start of the 2006-07 school year.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
