Power to the Pedagogues

"This decision marks the end of our harassment, the end of our standing as second-class citizens." So said President John Ryor of the National Education Association before 9,000 NEA members in Miami Beach last week. The decision Ryor referred to: for the first time in its 119-year history, the NEA would endorse a presidential candidate. While the nod will not come until after the political conventions, it is virtually certain that it will go to Jimmy Carter.

For those in Miami Beach, many sporting UNITED MIND WORKERS or FORD IS A PAIN IN THE CLASS buttons, the decision came as little surprise. Since 1972, the 1,800,000-member NEA, the largest public employee union in the country, has become increasingly active in politics. As Ryor put it: "We're not considered nice, quiet Milquetoasts any more."

Rich and Aggressive. If the NEA'S track record is any indication, Carter can expect an effective campaign effort mounted on his behalf. In the 1974 elections, the NEA claims to have aided in the election of 80% of the congressional candidates it endorsed--250 out of 310. This year NEA-PAC, the political action committee of the union, plans to pour in more than $700,000 to its candidates' campaigns (up from $30,000 in 1972, the year NEA-PAC was founded). The NEA can also furnish campaign workers: there are, after all, 4,000 to 6,000 teachers in every congressional district.

The NEA's state and local affiliates have also been successful backing school-board members, city councilmen, state legislators, governors and congressmen. California Teachers Association funds went to all but three of the 54 Democratic state assemblymen elected in 1974, and the CTA is now rated, behind the oil lobby, as the most generous campaign contributor in the state. Indiana's state association is described by politicos there as being aggressive and in the last election helped defeat Congressman Earl Landgrebe, a Republican who had consistently voted against education bills.

What do the teachers want from their candidates? Until the mid-'60s the NEA scorned the need for collective bargaining. But now more than a million teachers enjoy some degree of collective bargaining, and the union is asking legislators to extend that right to all public employees. The NEA wants a Secretary of Education in the Cabinet and would like to see the federal share of funding for public schools increase from the present 7.9% of the total cost to 33%, or $22 billion.

According to critics, such an increase in federal funding would serve mainly to establish "a full-employment program for teachers." The newly militant NEA has other detractors. Complains California Assemblyman John Vasconellos: "We never hear about kids, only about teachers."

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