New Business Item 99

While I don't think this amendment passed, that it was even on the agenda tells you everything you need to know about the unions and their anti-charter talking points:

 

New Business Item 99

 

The NEA and its affiliates publicize our current position countering the misleading impressions left by the charter schools' and charter school organizations' holding of live public lotteries for the selection of their students and the particular manner in which they do so. Any such campaign should be low-cost. These public lotteries are expensive, manipulative, deceptive, and highly-choreographed mass events--often held in auditoriums and ballrooms--and are designed to mislead the media and the public, promoting a demonstrably false and absurd premise: that charter schools and their operators are the heroes out to save education, and are fighting against the public school system and against teacher unions who have irreparably destroyed education. The NEA and its affiliates need to counter these lottery events by presenting a full, accurate, and nuanced picture of the circumstances involved. This would include both the successes achieved by the nearby public school teachers and their schools--the schools from which the lottery-holding charter schools attempt to lure students--and the difficulties faced by these nearby public schools and their teachers. These difficulties include:

 

1. the deeper and deeper cuts to their schools' budgets and the problems arising from this, such as ballooning class size, lack of materials, and the poor physical conditions of these building;

 

2. the mandatory requirement of public--though not charter--schools to accept and educate all students, regardless the challenges that come with educating certain groups of students:

 

a. special education students;

b. English language learners;

c. students with behavior issues; and

d. students from poverty and/or dysfunctional family environments;

 

3. and the requirement of public--though not charter--school teachers and administrators to persist in educating even most difficult students and not to expel them except under the most extreme circumstances.