"The NEA is a Terrorist Organization"

So sayeth Secretary of Education Rod Paige during a meeting with the nation's governors at the White House today. The NEA, for those not in the know, is the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers' union.

Paige later said the comment was a joke (well, no kidding), and that it wasn't a very good joke (ditto).

This, however, gives us an opportunity to talk about the NEA. Is it an altruistic association selflessly dedicated to improving the education of American children, or is it a conspiracy whose only goal is to thwart all reform of public education? You guessed it: it's neither.

The NEA is a labor union. No more, no less. Its raison d'etre is to improve the compensation and working conditions of its employees, and to protect their job security. If the NEA failed to deliver in any of those areas, its members could, and would, dump it in favor of a different union.

The important thing for American parents and taxpayers to realize is that the interests of the NEA are not necessarily congruent with those of students. A new teaching method that improved outcomes while halving the number of teachers would be a pedagogical and economic windfall for the nation's families and taxpayers, but it would be opposed by the NEA. It would HAVE to be. If the NEA backed such a method, teachers would dump it faster than Howard Dean at an Iowa caucas.

Remember that the next time you read an NEA position statement on the latest education reform proposal.