Whispering, Talking, And Doing…Do Actions Speak Louder Than Words?

Behind the scenes National Education Association apparatchiks and FairTest activists are furiously waging a whispering campaign to convince people that though the Connecticut NAACP intervened in the anti-No Child Left Behind lawsuit on the side of the Bush Administration neither they nor the national NAACP really support the law at all and are in fact right there with NEA-FairTest. Problem is the actual filings (pdf), press releases, the statements of NAACP officials in CT, and other actions show that the NEA-FairTest line is basically, well, propaganda. The national NAACP is on board with the latest NEA-ginned up sign-on letter calling for changes to No Child but they signed-off on the decision for the CT chapter to intervene (courageously it should be added because the NEA really went nuts and can bring a lot of pressure to bear on this kind of stuff). One of these things is politics, sign-on letters don’t change things and it’s easier to go on than to stay off. The other action is actual litigation, that does change things. Also, related, is this op-ed from earlier in the week by California Secretary of Education (and ES board member) Alan Bersin and California NAACP President Alice Huffman. All this shows the extent to which the NEA and FairTest are fighting a rearguard action in terms of addressing the caffeine headache. But give the NEA folks some credit, while their buddies at the Republican Study Committee are trying to build a bridge to the early 19th Century, the NEA is only trying to build one to the 1980s.