What’s new for NEA?
At last week’s NEA Representative Assembly, a new leadership team was elected that included Lily Eskelsen Garcia as president, Becky Pringle as Vice President, and Princess Moss as Treasurer. They are not the first women or women of color in these positions, but having all three positions filled by women of color is precedent setting. Lily is certainly a change in personality from outgoing President, Dennis van Roekel, but the question on a lot of members’ minds is, “will this lead to changes in how NEA does business?” This article from Politico is a nice introduction to Ms. Eskelsen Garcia as any, and shows both things that concern, and things that could point the way to a better direction for NEA.
Let’s start with the bad. Eskelsen Garcia’s defense of the work of the Gates Foundation in education is not inspiring. Even Randi Weingarten had to bow to pressure from members to not take money from Gates for the AFT Innovation fund. I’m not going to belabor this point since others have made it before, so for more on why the Gates Foundation is not a friend of education read Anthony Cody. Least you think I hold a low opinion of their work just because they are horn-ing in on my professional turf, the same critique has been made about their funding of health initiatives. Giving them a “B+” reminds one of the grading curve that can occur when you have a star athlete, or the child of a big donor in a class.
What else gives me pause, is her continued un-critical embrace of Common Core standards, which I remain skeptical of. I’ve met and heard Eskelsen Garcia in person, and her statements on CCSS have been consistent. She loves the standards and feels that they cannot be assessed with bubble test (presumably they are too creative or open, or some-such). Since many of the standards seem to be written precisely to become a multiple-choice questions, but given that, it would seem that she either thinks the new tests are going to allow for this creativity, and if they don’t she would oppose them. My own student’s experience with the test can be summed up in the comment one of them made, “It’s the same as the old test, it’s just on a computer.” Computer-adaptive Reflections on Teaching » Blog Archive » What’s new for NEA?: