RA Action:

News from the NEA Annual Meeting

July 2, 2008

Outreach to Teach | Read-In | A Star Teacher | Press Releases | Videos

Leading with Courage and Commitment

Nearly 9,000 delegates to the National Education Association’s 146th Annual Meeting hit the ground running in the nation’s capital this week as the Association prepares for the 2008 Representative Assembly and a historic political season for NEA members, their schools, and their students.

Delegates to NEA's 2008 Annual Meeting crowd the Convention Center in Washington, D.C.

This morning the Association issued a detailed policy statement on the federal role in education, Great Public Schools for Every Student by 2020: Achieving a New Balance in the Federal Role to Transform America’s Public Schools. NEA proposes that federal, state, and local leaders partner to make every public school great by the year 2020. Find out more about the statement and related materials.

Also on tap today: a forum addressing the dropout crisis among ethnic minorities, featuring national leaders from the ethnic minority community, including John Quiñones, co-anchor of ABC Primetime, and actor and New York Times best seller Hill Harper. Tonight, the 42nd annual Human and Civil Rights Awards Dinner celebrates the Association’s continued commitment to social justice and salutes contemporary civil rights heroes.

Off and Running

Delegates get to work early in a critical year

The Representative Assembly doesn’t start until tomorrow but many delegates got an early start debating issues, electing NEA Student Program and NEA-Retired leaders, and swapping ideas on how to close the achievement gaps.

Read Across Washington NEA members and Dr. Seuss characters galore kicked off a celebration of summer reading in partnership with D.C.-area public libraries. In support of NEA's Read Across Washington, public libraries in the city and surrounding Maryland and Virginia suburbs hosted (in Seuss style!) readings in English, Chinese, and Spanish, showing that summer reading is vital for all. Despite economic woes and rising gas prices, "children can still have a great vacation when they are in the company of a good book," NEA President Reg Weaver told attendees.

Everywhere, there was a buzz of anticipation that this election year, NEA members can help change the course of our nation and schools. President Reg Weaver captured the feeling in his message to the Joint Conference on Concerns of Minorities and Women, saying, “The air this election year is supercharged with the possibility of change. You can feel it. Not change that nibbles at the edges… but transformative change of our society.”

NEA-Retired celebrated 25 years of service to NEA’s mission of great public schools for every child. Even in party mode, Retired delegates were more than ready to raise money for the NEA Fund for Children and Public Education and team up with student members to refurbish a nearby high school.

Got tuition? That’s the question NEA-Student Program members are asking as part of a new campaign to lobby for college affordability. Although Congress recently acted to keep a lid on student loan interest rates—thanks in part to the efforts of Student Program members—this is no time to let the issue drop, said Student Program Chair Anthony Daniels.

At the Joint Conference , delegates shared strategies for meeting the real-world challenges—from poverty to trendy new drugs—that confront our schools, and spoke of getting politicians to do their part.

Sonia Nieto, an internationally renowned teacher educator, spoke about education in a diverse nation. "There's no town or city or even little hamlet that can escape that multicultural reality," she said, and the response from educators should be more than "food and festivals."

"Identity, difference, power, and privilege are all connected,” so educators should “welcome dangerous discourse" and encourage students to take action, Nieto said, citing a first grade class that registered 37 new voters.