(OK, so I confess that I have no idea whether Reg Weaver actually HAD the Farm Workers, though there is the stuff out there in the Jack Coons article about Cesar Chavez holding back support for vouchers so he wouldn’t lose $200,000 per year that was being pumped to him by Al Shanker and the AFT.)
One tidbit from inside today’s House Education and Labor Committee hearing on NCLB reauthorization that I wanted to pass along, especially in light of the recent blogospheric flap over whether or not public charter schools should be named after Cesar Chavez if they don’t force teachers to automatically become union members:
Wasn’t it odd to see the United Farm Workers, which now operates free tutoring programs for kids in failing schools under NCLB, firmly (relatively speaking, since everyone seems to have come out against the draft revisions, but for different reasons) on the opposite side of the National Education Association? Those right-winger UFW’ers!
For that matter, you can bet that NEA boss Reg Weaver is hoping people didn’t stop and listen to the panel with the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund, the National Urban League, the Civil Rights Project, the Citizens Commission on Civil Rights, the National Council of La Raza, etc.
Tuning in to that one might have given the impression that there actually is some value to holding schools accountable for adequately addressing the needs of all students.