NEA Leaders Wrap Up Back-to-School Tour, Salute Education Support Professionals

By Sara Robertson and Alain Jehlen Education Support Professionals (ESPs) in Orlando, Florida, are being crushed financially, caught between state mandated salary cuts and increased health insurance costs. Yet despite their economic plight, student safety is still a major concern. Those are the messages NEA President Dennis Van Roekel heard from some 60+ Orange County [...]

NCLB Gets Curiouser and Curiouser

By Alain Jehlen Eighty-nine percent of Florida’s schools are subpar according to No Child Left Behind. But there’s a way thousands of Florida students can quickly become “proficient”: move to another state. These are just a few of the recent signs that Alice in Wonderland has come to America’s public schools as the 2014 deadline [...]

Study Shows Students Taking Online Courses More Likely to Fail

By Mary Ellen Flannery Maybe online education isn’t the magic pill for cash-strapped school districts and colleges. In a newly released study of 51,000 Washington State community college students, Columbia University researchers found that students who took online courses were more likely to fail or drop out of the course than students who took the [...]

NEA President, Education Secretary Announce National Labor-Management Summit

By Amy Buffenbarger and Staci Maiers NEA President Dennis Van Roekel joined U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in announcing plans today to convene a national education reform conference on labor-management collaboration early next year. The conference will highlight examples of progressive collective bargaining agreements across the country and identify opportunities for further reforms at [...]

Gulf Coast State Affiliates Eye Spill’s Economic Spread

By Cynthia McCabe NEW ORLEANS – Gulf Coast hotel and restaurant owners nervously eyeing bookings for this July 4 holiday weekend aren’t the only ones concerned about the economic impact of the BP oil spill. So too are education officials in the Gulf states. Significant declines in the region’s $20 billion tourism industry – and the [...]

SB6: The Worst Bill in America?

By Kevin Hart April 6, 2010 — Florida educators don’t want Senate Bill 6. Parents don’t want it either. Students have even taken to writing their legislators and showing up at the capitol to protest a bill that will make Florida one of the least teacher-friendly states in America and could lead talented educators to [...]