President's Viewpoint
Educators Unite!

ESEA and budget cuts are an assault on our professional integrity and our livelihoods.

"A time comes," Martin Luther King Jr., once said, "when your silence won't protect you."

Well, for teachers and education support professionals that time is now.

A new federal education law that combines worthy goals with fundamentally flawed implementation has merged with the worst state budget crises in more than 30 years to create a "perfect storm" for educators.

At the same time that the federal government is requiring improved student performance on standardized tests, our class sizes are ballooning, our qualifications for a highly qualified teacher and professional development have been reduced, and school funding and construction to accommodate the growing number of students is being put on hold.

If we are to survive this storm with our professional integrity intact and our jobs secure, we are going to have to strategize, organize, and mobilize like we have never done before. What's more, we must re-energize ourselves as we recruit new members who are committed to our profession, children, students, and public education.

We must champion the goals that we have long advocated--many of which are embodied in the reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)--while fighting to change how those goals are implemented. And to this fight, we must bring a passion, an intensity, and a high level of member participation that is unrivaled.

Under ESEA, as it is currently crafted, your best efforts in the classroom, and your students and school, can be judged a failure-- based on a single number on one of either two tests.

Under ESEA, if the students in your school do not score higher on the standardized tests every year for four straight years, you could face serious consequences.

Under ESEA, your school's lack of resources will not prevent you from being labeled a failure.

Under ESEA, successful, experienced teachers will have to demonstrate their subject matter competency, either by passing a test or by meeting a "high objective uniform statewide standard of evaluation."

I have yet to meet a professional educator who is not angered once he or she learns about the fine print in ESEA. We must help teachers and ESPs channel their anger and frustration in a manner that will support our plight in this fight.

The fight to change ESEA and stop the budget cuts will not be won by a handful of skilled association lobbyists and spokespeople. It will be won by NEA members, teachers, ESPs, parents, and others demanding that their elected representatives listen attentively and amend this law--for the sake our students, our schools, and our profession. It will be won by writing letters and e-mails, by sending faxes, and by using our united voices. It will be won by each one of us exercising our rights and responsibilities as citizens in the world's longest-running democracy.

It will take a groundswell of democracy to amend ESEA and secure adequate resources for our schools. Are we up to the task?

Yes, we are!

Comments? E-mail Reg Weaver at RegWeaver@nea.org.