Largest U.S. Teachers Union Calls for Education Secretary Duncan to Resign.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s relations with teachers unions just got more difficult.

Delegates of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union, voted at their annual convention to call on Duncan to resign after similar efforts had failed in previous years. And the NEA is about to get a new president, Lily Eskelsen García, who is known for her tough talk and determination to fight back against corporate school reformers. She told the delegates:

“People who don’t know what they’re talking about are talking about increasing the use of commercial standardized tests in high-stakes decisions about students and about educators … when all the evidence that can be gathered shows that it is corrupting what it means to teach and what it means to learn….

We know what is at stake, and it is why we are who we are. It is why we are fearless and why we will not be silent when people who, for their own profit and political posture, subvert words like ‘reform’ or ‘accountability.’”

The delegates voted on a surprise agenda item that said the “department’s failed education agenda focused on more high-stakes testing, grading and pitting public school students against each other based on test scores, and for continuing to promote policies and decisions that undermine public schools and colleges, the teaching education professionals, and education unions,” according to the Associated Press.

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Article Credit
“Largest U.S. Teachers Union Calls for Education Secretary Duncan to Resign.”
By Valerie Strauss
Washington Post. The Washington Post, 8 July 2014. Web. 09 July 2014.