NEA Votes Policy Shift on Performance

Teachers should be allowed to rate the performance of fellow instructors and aid in their dismissal, the nation’s largest teachers union agreed, marking a shift in the union’s mission. The voice vote by the National Education Assn.’s representative assembly was seen as a test of the organization’s effort to change its popular image. The NEA has been lambasted by politicians and other critics as an industrial trade union concerned chiefly with wages and defending its members’ jobs at the expense of education. A majority of the 9,000 delegates agreed that the move was necessary. This was a victory for Bob Chase, the NEA head who was been promoting a “new unionism” since he took office last year. Under its new mission, the union would stress more cooperation with school boards and administrators in exchange for a broader role in decision -making. That also means a role in policing the quality of teachers.