The NEA, Stuck in Reverse…

The wonderfully-monickered Kay Brilliant, the NEA's director of education policy and practice, has scolded the Obama Administration for its “narrow agenda” in administering the Race to the Top competition. In a stunningly unsurprising letter released Friday, Ms. Brilliant wrote:  "Despite growing evidence to the contrary, it appears that the administration has decided that charter schools are the only answer to what ails America's public schools.”

Well, not so much.  Read the RTT’s draft guidelines and you’ll find plenty of evidence that Duncan and co. are concerned about data systems, standards, and other staples of reform.  But that line about charters is a head fake anyway.  What really worries the NEA is, well,  that other thing.  Writes Ms. Brilliant:  "It is inappropriate to require that states be able to link data on student achievement to individual teachers for the purpose of teacher and principal evaluation ..." 

In the attached RTT comments, the union says the Administration’s priorities contravene local collective bargaining. There’s a hint of lawsuits.

So after torpedoing reauthorization of NCLB two years ago because bipartisan congressional leadership dared to surface the idea of paying teachers for performance, the NEA is now prepared to take Arne Duncan to court because he thinks teachers and principals should be evaluated on whether their students actually learn something? 

Now that’s a 21st-century agenda.