SELLOUT: Why the NJEA’s testing compromise with Christie was a mistake
The problem with the compromise reached between the Christie Administration and the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) over the uses of high-stakes testing is this: The teachers’ union, rightly concerned about inappropriate uses of test results to evaluate teachers, won valuable, if temporary, protections for its members. However, the union, which has, for months, promoted a partnership with parent groups and others concerned about the damage the tests would do to students achieved no protections at all for children.
The union was happy to allow organizations like Save Our Schools—New Jersey to provide it with political cover so that its self-interested opposition to wrong-headed teacher evaluations could genuinely appear to be a much broader concern with the corporate reform movement that is driving much of these changes. The NJEA did everything it could to assume leadership of this growing and increasingly comprehensive anti-corporate movement but, in the end, in the last few days, it took what short-term advantages it could get and ran, abandoning the larger issues embraced by its former partners.
Teacher unions historically have invoked broader interests to promote their own self-interest. Nothing new about that. What is new, however, is a toxic political climate in which that strategy produces nothing but anger that is often aimed at classroom teachers and even the institution of public education itself. Chris Christie tapped into a deep well of resentment against that strategy back in 2009 and 2010 by repeatedly and unfairly bashing teachers and their unions for their “greed” and SELLOUT: Why the NJEA’s testing compromise with Christie was a mistake | Bob Braun's Ledger: