Christian Educator Says NEA Wants One Thing: Control


(This update courtesy of Agape Press.)



by Rusty Pugh and Jody Brown

(AgapePress) – The head of a Christian teachers group says the National Education Association wants more control of charter schools, which he says the union sees as another source of competition.

The NEA wants to adopt a “new policy” toward charter schools. The union is demanding that charter schools adopt several restrictions and policies that currently bind public schools — such as requiring charter school teachers to be certified by the state, and that charter schools should not be run by for-profit entities.

Forrest Turpen, executive director of the Christian Educators Association International, says the NEA's policy is yet another obstacle to education reform. He says obviously parents are fed up with the current public school system and they want change. But Turpen says the NEA is hostile to change.

“Why [is] the union … hostile to change, flexibility, innovation? It's very simple — control,” Turpen says. “The union wants to be able to control all these issues, and if you allow this flexibility and the ability for a charter school to do things on their own without following their dictates, then they lose control … they lose dollars and cents. So that's why they're hostile to this kind of movement.”

Turpen says for a variety of reasons, including job security for its members, the NEA is trying to reshape charter schools in its own likeness. “If they can reshape them and set the requirements, then they have control and that is the bottom line for the NEA,” he says. “They want to be able to control everything that happens in education, and that's the direct opposite of what charter schools were set up to do.”

CEAI is a non-profit religious organization based in Pasadena, California. The group's 32nd annual conference took place last week in Anaheim. Featured speakers at the conference included Brad Dacus of the Pacific Justice Institute, Eric Buehrer of Gateways to Better Education, and Dr. Kathy Koch, founder and president of Celebrate Kids!

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