You would be hard pressed to find a single k-12 classroom teacher who supports RTTT (Race To The Top), the Obama federal education program, yet their national representative body endorses Obama ad infinitum.... go figure.
(Chicago Tribune) — The nation’s largest teachers union voted Monday to support President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election bid, marking one of the earliest union endorsements for the administration.
About 72 percent of the National Education Association’s representative assembly voted to recommend the president’s candidacy to its 3.2 million members, despite past disagreements between the Obama administration and many rank-and-file teachers who dislike parts of the president’s reform agenda.
An estimated 5,414 members cast their support for the president while 2,102 members said no during the summer convention held in Chicago.
The NEA becomes one of the first labor unions to formally support the president in 2012.
“We have the same shared vision of America. (The president) has always talked about the importance of education from preschool to the graduate level,” said NEA President Dennis Van Roekel. ” I don’t mind fighting on how to get to that shared vision. I believe out of that discussion may come ideas that neither one of us thought about and may be better.”
It is the earliest endorsement ever made by the union, according to Van Roekel. Indeed, the Republican field of candidates has not winnowed to a single candidate to oppose the president.
The vote came a day after Vice President Joseph Biden fired up the teachers with a speech intended to smooth over past discord and draw a contrast between the president’s education policies and those espoused by several Republican governors who have sought to dial back collective bargaining rights.
The Obama administration has lauded efforts that would tie an educator’s evaluation to student learning, make it easier to dismiss ineffective teachers and promote charter schools among other initiatives even as they worked to forestall educator layoffs and classroom cuts by securing increased funding.
The union’s representative assembly — the group’s primary policy-making arm —
meets once a year. Union leaders said they faced a decision to either be very early or very late in determining their political support for what Van Roekel expects will be a spirited campaign.  “I think it’s going to be a very energized electorate,” he said.  (article)