During the National Education Association's annual meeting in Dallas last week, delegates voted to spend several millions to promote the union's agenda for the new No Child Left Behind Act, an unprecedented mobilization around a single issue, according to Mike Antonucci, who filed riveting daily reports on the union conclave for his own Education Intelligence Agency (EIA). The NEA plans a public campaign "to build broad community consensus against the negative aspects" of the new law, among other things. Antonucci also reports that, while the union has stopped releasing current membership numbers, total NEA membership seems to have flattened and at least 20 state affiliates lost members over the past year. Antonucci's dispatches from the front can be viewed at http://members.aol.com/educationintel. (Click on "Archives.") Readers who want to receive a daily briefing on the AFT convention beginning July 15 are advised to sign up for the EIA e-mail bulletin by sending a subscription request (including preferred email address, name and state) to [email protected].
