National Education Association

The country's top education official challenged teachers unions Thursday to embrace historically controversial ways of promoting teacher effectiveness, including offering merit pay and evaluating instructors based on student test scores. "You must become full partners and leaders in education reform. You must be willing to change," U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan told the National Education Assn. at its annual meeting in San Diego.

The National Education Assn. faces a federal lawsuit accusing it of breaching its duty to members by recommending a high-cost retirement plan in exchange for millions of dollars from the managers of the plan. The suit, which seeks class-action status, was filed by two of the 57,000 schoolteachers who the suit says invested $1 billion in a so-called 403(b) retirement plan endorsed by the NEA.

The AFL-CIO said the National Education Assn., with 2.8 million members, would allow local affiliates to join the labor federation, which was hurt when major unions defected last year. Reg Weaver, president of the nation's largest teachers union, said the partnership would give educators more muscle when they campaigned for candidates for local political office and advocated legislation. "This is about two organizations coming together to meet the needs of working families," Weaver said.

The nation's largest teachers union and school districts in three states sued the Bush administration Wednesday over the No Child Left Behind law, aiming to free schools from complying with any part not paid for by the federal government. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for eastern Michigan, is the first major challenge to President Bush's signature education policy.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa returned to his teachers union roots Sunday, asking 9,000 educators from around the nation to join him in fighting for more money for public schools. After a speech before the annual assembly of the National Education Assn., Villaraigosa, who once worked as an organizer for the city's teachers union, also reiterated a pledge to develop proposals to start fixing the troubled Los Angeles Unified School District by the fall. "I'm committed to those public schools....

The Bush administration's simmering frustration with criticism of the 2002 school reform law known as "No Child Left Behind" boiled over Monday as Education Secretary Rod Paige lashed out at the nation's largest teachers union, calling the 2.7-million-member National Education Assn. a "terrorist organization."

The National Education Assn. asked President Bush on Tuesday to fire Education Secretary Rod Paige for calling the union a "terrorist organization," but the White House said Paige's job was safe. Paige, who made his comment in a private meeting with governors Monday, apologized for his choice of words but maintained the union uses "obstructionist scare tactics." Reg Weaver, president of the union of 2.

The house party in the Hollywood Hills was billed as a nonpartisan "mobilization" to cast attention on the nation's troubled public schools. Actress Helen Hunt, commentator Arianna Huffington and others chatted about the need to hire more teachers and restore arts education as they sipped Merlot and nibbled potato pancakes with smoked salmon. But behind the house party, and scores of others around the country organized last week by the National Education Assn.

Every child should be required to attend kindergarten and should be offered free pre-kindergarten, the nation's largest teachers union says. National Education Assn. delegates called for the broad expansion in early childhood learning during their annual business meeting last week. Left open was how local, state and federal governments would raise the money to pay for it.

U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige on Saturday urged the nation's largest teachers union to throw its support behind President Bush's education reform bill, saying that teachers will ultimately determine whether the program succeeds. Paige's speech at a conference of the National Education Assn. steered clear of many controversial issues and served mainly as a goodwill gesture to a union often criticized by Republicans as being an impediment to reforms.