NEA: "We're not opposed to charter schools."

Jeff Bryant, who remains a primary enabler of the corporate unions, NEA and AFT, recently interviewed NEA VP Becky Pringle at NetRoots.

JB: Does that mean NEA is anti-charter?

BP: We're not opposed to charter schools. We have started charter schools, and we have members in charter schools. But charters need to have specific criteria. They need to be accountable, controlled by democratically elected boards, and have transparency. And –an important condition often overlooked – they need to be part of the system, not separate. They should be part of a system of education that makes sure every student gets what they need to thrive. We have examples of that.

Bryant does not ask about and Pringle does not volunteer info on specific examples.  Why?  Because if they exist, they are so rare as to be meaningless. 

NOT among the criteria that Pringle says "charters need to have" are humane learning environments, non-penal instructional strategies, rich curriculums, professionally certified teachers and principals, librarians, counselors, or desegregated classrooms.  Nor does she define in this interview or elsewhere what "accountability" or "transparency" mean. 

The truth is that NEA only cares about expanding membership and collecting the dues that members pay each year, with the false hope of slowing the bleeding out of public schools and professional teaching.  As long as NEA and AFT remain loyalists to the DNC's Clintonian contingent of paternalistic corporate reformers, every teacher should boycott these core agencies of corporate enabling.