SACRAMENTO, CA - On September 22, the National Education Association (NEA), the nation's largest teachers union, along with its allies, sponsored "house parties'' across the country. These events brought together education activists as part of a so-called "National Mobilization for Great Public Schools'' campaign. It speaks volumes about the NEA that leftist organizations like MoveOn.org were among its chosen partners.

The agenda of the house parties indicates that the NEA is less interested in promoting public schools than in bashing President Bush. In its house-party toolkit, all education ills are blamed on the White House. Disadvantaged and disabled students, school construction, smaller class sizes, teacher quality, and after-school programs have all been shortchanged by President Bush's supposedly miserly policies. Of course, the truth is far different from the NEA's propaganda.

From 2001 to 2004, President Bush raised funding for the federal No Child Left Behind Act by 43 percent, elementary and secondary education by nearly 50 percent, support for teachers by nearly 40 percent, funding for low-income students by more than 40 percent, and special education by 75 percent. Whether these funding hikes will result in long-term increases in student performance is a legitimate issue for public debate, but the primary purpose of the NEA's house parties isn't to raise student achievement. It's to pummel the president and elect their endorsed candidate, Senator John Kerry. Which explains the MoveOn.org connection.

For those who have forgotten, earlier this year MoveOn.org featured videos on its website comparing President Bush to Adolf Hitler. The group has spent millions on anti-Bush attack ads. MoveOn.org co-founders Wes and Joan Blades say that the house parties are needed because President Bush "is handing out tax breaks to millionaires while forcing school districts to lay off teachers.'' It should come as no surprise that the NEA has allied itself with a fever-swamp group like MoveOn.org.

In his incisive 2003 book The Worm in the Apple, PRI senior education fellow and former Forbes editor Peter
Brimelow documents the NEA's inner workings and political machinations. Describing the NEA's annual convention,
Brimelow observes: "The NEA Representative Assembly is held over every Fourth of July weekend. But the atmosphere is not patriotic but partisan. In trusting private, speakers are blatantly political and unquestioningly
liberal-Democratic. They routinely denounce the `Extreme Right' and the Republican Party.'' Former U.S. education secretary Bill Bennett is quoted saying that with the NEA "you're looking at the absolute heart and center of the Democratic Party.''

The NEA isn't just a pillar of the Democratic Party. Its ultra-liberal agenda includes opposing capital punishment,
favoring nationalized health care, and promoting stringent gun control. Indeed, Brimelow points out: "The NEA's
persistent left-wing loonyism is perhaps less obvious with the end of the cold war. Unlike in the 1980s, no nuclear freeze campaign operates from its Washington, DC, headquarters. But the NEA remains committed to the radical premise that sweeping social reform must precede any real education reform. Blame society, not the school system.'' The MoveOn.org partnership, therefore, is a natural alliance for the NEA.

NEA president Reg Weaver says that "more finger pointing and simplistic solutions'' won't make public schools great. He ought to follow his own advice. Stop the blatant politicking, the scapegoating, and the pie-in-the-sky
policy prescriptions. Until that happens, the NEA will continue to suffer from a credibility gap of Grand Canyon
proportions.

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Lance T. Izumi is a senior fellow in California Studies at the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco. He can
be reached via email at lizumi@pacificresearch.org.