Teachers Could Defer Obama Support

From The Wall Street Journal:

Widespread unhappiness among teachers about President Barack Obama's education policies is threatening to derail a National Education Association proposal to give him an early endorsement for re-election.

The political action committee of the NEA, the nation's largest union, adopted a resolution in May to endorse Mr. Obama. The proposal will come before the NEA's 9,000-member representative assembly on Monday at the union's annual convention here.

Whether the rancor over the early endorsement will have long-term consequences is unclear. At some point, the NEA is likely to endorse Mr. Obama, as the union has never endorsed a Republican.

The NEA convention comes after teachers unions spent the last few months fighting nationwide efforts to scale back their power. In several Republican-controlled states, including Idaho, Ohio and Wisconsin, lawmakers severely restricted union collective-bargaining rights.

Organized labor, a power base for Democrats, could be crucial to Mr. Obama's re-election bid, especially in swing states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana.

Mr. Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan have had a testy relationship with teachers unions. The unions don't like the administration's embrace of charter schools—public schools run by non-government entities—or its support for the dismissal of ineffective teachers in low-performing schools.

NEA members have been particularly hostile to Race to the Top, Mr. Obama's initiative that awarded grants to states that embraced education overhauls such as linking teacher evaluations to student test scores. At last year's convention, NEA delegates gave the initiative a "no confidence" vote. One speaker was Diane Ravitch, an education historian critical of Obama's education policies.