Elections do matter, and the results at the state level here in California and at the national level will change the dynamics and we look for them to be better.
Peter Schrag: Statesmanship: Will it be a new course for CTA?
By Peter Schrag -
Published 12:00 am PST Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger got no end of attention last year for the radical change of course and tone that followed the mauling his bash-em agenda got in the special election of 2005.
But the California Teachers Association, the governor's biggest "special interest" bashee, which spent some $100 million to administer that mauling, changed course as well. And that change could be as significant as the governor's for both the schools and the state's political climate.
Along with CTA President Barbara Kerr, a key figure in that change was CTA government representative Joe Nuñez, who's also been a member of the state Board of Education for the past five years and who's up for reconfirmation by the state Senate tomorrow.
Because of Nuñez's board votes against some liberal attempts to water down the state's academic standards, and because of some Republicans' itch to take a shot at the governor's reviving centrism, the outcome is uncertain.
Schwarzenegger, who lost big in 2005, had good reason to change course last year. His new good-guy role paid off big in his re-election in November. For the CTA, which won but had to raise all that money to do it, the change, although likewise a case of enlightened self-interest, was stunning.
Among conservatives -- and for many others as well -- the teacher unions have long been high on the list of roadblocks to school reform. It's a reputation that's often been richly deserved, particularly by the powerful National Education Association and by many of its state and local affiliates.
At the core of that intransigence lay the vestiges of an industrial unionism that was never a comfortable fit for organizations whose members wanted to be regarded as professionals, not as blue-collar assembly line workers
