Teachers Discard The Union Label; As the National Education Association pursues a liberal agenda, many of its rank and file refuse to toe the line and have formed their own teacher-advocacy groups

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 30, 2003 | by John Berlau

Byline: John Berlau, INSIGHT

The powerful national teachers unions took one on the chin in September when, despite their intense lobbying, both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate Appropriations Committee narrowly approved the first government-funded voucher plan for the children of the District of Columbia. This was made possible by a diverse network of school-choice advocates including, most importantly, parents groups.

But education watchers say the most important new constituency of groups critical of the teacher unions is, surprisingly, teachers themselves. All over the country, some of the most distinguished public-school teachers are taking on the unions that claim to represent them on issues ranging from alleged misuse of member dues for political activity to union insistence on "politically correct" curricula. Paralleling the movement for parental choice is a growing call for teacher choice that is, the right of teachers to be free of what many call union harassment.

"Teachers have a right to choose and they have a right to make a free choice, not a compelled choice, not a coerced choice, not a choice made with intimidation," says Tracey Bailey, national-projects director for the Association of American Educators (AAE), a professional teacher group that serves as an alternative to a union. "Teachers are professionals and they deserve to be treated as professionals. That means not being coerced and not having their money" taken to campaign for policies that go against their convictions.

Bailey is a former public high-school teacher who was named Florida Teacher of the Year in 1992 and National Teacher of the Year in 1993. As a young science teacher, he put his students on the cutting edge by showing the applications of chemistry and physics in new techniques such as DNA fingerprinting. He loved using real-world lesson plans to motivate his students, but he resented being hassled to join the teacher union.

"I got the coercive mail in my mailbox,"

Bailey recalled. "After the first brochure, I got a more strongly worded reminder: 'Everyone else is a member. You're keeping us from getting 100 percent. Shame on you. You should carry your own weight.'"

He says, "I might have even joined then just to go along and get along. But then about a week after that came the third one. That one, among other choice words, said, 'Don't be a freeloader. Join now.' They made it clear that I was a jerk for not joining, wasn't carrying my weight, wasn't a good teacher and was hurting other teachers. For about 30 seconds, my feelings as a 24-year-old kid were hurt. After that, I got mad. I wasn't a freeloader; I more than carried my weight. I was up late planning lessons and I was a good teacher. I knew right away that any group that had that kind of attitude wasn't something I needed to get into. I just stayed out."

Bailey gave in to the pressure briefly after he was nominated for the Florida Teacher of the Year award but then quit the state teachers union to join the advisory board of AAE. "They [the union] had agendas that didn't really deal with the classroom, didn't really deal with the day-in, day-out of helping me be a better math or science teacher," he recalls.

And, like Bailey, many young teachers now share a similar skepticism of labor unions, says Krista Kafer, senior policy analyst for education at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington. "The younger teachers are more entrepreneurial, and they see the unions as impediments to their individually negotiating with a school," Kafer tells Insight. "Individual teachers may support things like school choice, merit pay, the changing of the single-salary scale. Unions always oppose those."

Unions also are suffering from a series of scandals involving misuse of teachers' dues. The FBI recently seized dozens of luxury items from officials of the Washington Teachers Union, including fur coats, designers clothes and a $57,000 Tiffany tea set. The officials are accused of embezzling more than $2 million of teachers' money. And in Miami, longtime United Teachers of Dade [County] President Pasquale "Pat" Tornillo pleaded guilty in August to tax evasion and mail fraud in connection with charges that he siphoned off member dues to pay for homes and hotel bills.

At the national level, the largest teacher union, the National Education Association (NEA), has been the subject of an intensive five-year probe by the conservative watchdog Landmark Legal Foundation, which accuses it of using member dues illegally to coordinate political campaigns with the Democratic Party. The Federal Election Commission dropped the case; the NEA maintains it only funds political activity through voluntary donations to its political-action committee.

But Landmark points to Democratic Party documents that refer to the NEA as part of a party-coordinated campaign in 1996 to "turn out Democratic voters on behalf of the entire Democratic ticket" and has filed a complaint with the IRS charging that the NEA illegally is using tax-exempt funds for political activity.