NEA Delegates Reject Merger Plan, But Door to Unity With AFT Still Open Delegates to the National Education Association's annual meeting soundly rejected a plan July 5 that would have paved the way for the union's merger with the American Federation of Teachers. J uly 18.
Unity is far from a dead issue for the nation's two major teacher organizations.
Read reactions to the votes and look ahead to what's next in unifying the two groups. How well the nation's students are reading depends on who's talking. Not open to interpretation, however, is that schoolchildren are still falling short of the goals set by U.S. leaders, a national assessment released last week shows. Only three of 24 popular school reform models have strong evidence that they improve student achievement, according to a report released last week that provides the most comprehensive rating of such programs by an independent research group. Businesses See Hot Commodity in School Data Perils, and potential, await as more groups customize school data for needs ranging from shopping for schools, to reforming them, to headhunting for principals and teachers.