The NEA Pyramid

Today's suggested reading comes from Mike Antonucci of the Education Intelligence Agency. It's entitled "The NEA Pyramid: The View Changes As you Rise to the Top of the Nation's Largest Union'.

The NEA surveyed it's members and the results are pretty interesting. Mike observes that the larger the local the more it leans left.

Mike starts out by reminding us that 90% of the money the NEA donates goes toward Democrats. On page six we learn that while the percentage of conservatives and liberals is 44% to 49% in tiny unions there is a decided lean to the liberal with 82% self-identifying themselves as liberal and a mere 14% calling themselves conservative by the time you get to the jumbo sized unions.

Troubling is the lack of change in leadership.

"Of all NEA local affiliate presidents, 42 percent have been elected 4 times or more. Eighty-nine percent of NEA local affiliate presidents were unopposed in their last election."

The problem may be:

"One question asked members how involved they were in the union at either the local, state or national level. Thirty-six percetn of them said 'not at all.' Right away, you can writ eoff approximately 972,000 NEA members who do nothing to affect the union's direction one way or the other."

And there is little wonder when "new members were asked by they joined NEA, the top answer (20 percent) was that they had "no choice."'

In America, land of the free, they didn't feel like they had a choice. I guess they can relate to their students.