West texas educator credit union

NEA's kind of candidate

Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone says the federal government should fund education mandates. That's one reason NEA backs his re-election.

Early this year, President Bush signed into law the costly Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which calls for annual reading and math tests, sanctions for schools that fail to display "adequate yearly progress," and strengthened quality provisions for teachers and Title I paraeducators-while failing to fulfill a 26-year-old federal promise to pay 40 percent of the cost of special education.

The statute's mandate, "no child left behind," is critical, but one the feds haven't fully funded and cash-strapped state governments may never be able to meet.

Like other congressional candidates recommended by NEA, Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone is pushing to make the federal government-which now pays only 9.4 percent of the nation's public education costs and 17 percent of the cost of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)-as accountable as any educator for student achievement.

This two-term senator challenges his colleagues to choose between increased education funding and tax cuts for the very wealthy. Wellstone opposes vouchers and voucher-like private tuition tax credits and "strongly advocates both guaranteed full funding for IDEA and increased resources for essential programs such as Title I," says NEA lobbyist Joel Packer.

"Senator Wellstone keeps saying, `You can't improve education on a tincup budget,'" adds NEA Government Relations Director Diane Shust. "That's a major reason he and most of the Minnesota delegation voted against the final version of ESEA."

Yet Minnesota's senior senator has not stopped trying to improve this law. With NEA support, Wellstone won passage of an ESEA amendment specifying that the new annual tests must measure higher-order thinking skills and serve as useful tools for educators.

Packer, who observes Wellstone in action, says this lawmaker's a hardworking pragmatist who cares deeply about kids and public education.

"Senator Wellstone works the issues and reaches across the aisle to build coalitions," the lobbyist concludes. "Plus, he visits classrooms and is in direct touch with educators' concerns."

"Paul Wellstone is always in classrooms; not many senators do that," points out Jean Jones, a first-grade teacher and union steward at Prosperity Heights Elementary in St. Paul. "He hears about the realities we face, especially in urban areas, where the only thing that seems to matter is standardized test scores."

Wellstone hears about it all, including poorly funded special ed mandates that force districts to raid general education budgets, pitting student against student. And Education Minnesota members constantly inform him about class size increases and program cuts, teacher layoffs, and health care cost hikes that erode educators' paychecks.

All this feeds the senator's determination to push for more federal assistance for education and a health care system that covers every American.

Desiree Payne, an executive board member of the St. Paul Federation of Teachers, welcomes the senator's call for full IDEA funding. "The learning disabled are not getting adequate support," she says.

And Payne, an employment services counselor at the St. Paul Workforce Center for Employment and Training, notes that added federal resources would be helpful in her own work. "I work with welfare recipients, mostly minor moms who must attend school," she says. "We never know what our budget will be from year to year."

Jones, who has endured cutbacks in her own Title I school (a reduction in teaching positions recently increased her class size from 19 to 27) and the teacher-bashing of Governor Jesse Ventura, is moved by Senator Wellstone's concern for educators.

"In his campaign ads, Paul has said that teachers and their work need to be valued," says Jones. "Teachers need to hear both things."

Jones serves on the governing board of the Minnesota AFL-CIO (Education Minnesota is also affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, which is part of the AFL-CIO), where she gets to see another side of Paul Wellstone.

"Paul identifies with working people and their families, knows labor issues and what's at stake, and has a labor voting record that's second to none," Jones says. "He walks picket lines and it's not for show. He'll picket whether a camera crew is there or not."

Jones sees the life challenges faced by students at Prosperity Heights Elementary, 75 percent of whom live in poverty, so there's something else she appreciates about Wellstone.

"Paul understands that poverty, violence, jobs, and education are all interconnected issues," she says. "You can't just pull one piece out without looking at the others."

Get the Word Out!

Add up Wellstone's plusses, and it's clear why NEA recommends him over opponent Norm Coleman, a tuition tax credit proponent who created an adversarial relationship with city employees when he served as mayor of St. Paul.

"There was constant friction between Coleman and city workers over health care and budget issues," notes Jones, who also serves on the local AFL-CIO labor council. "He exhibits an `If you don't like it, tough' attitude and views public employees as people who simply 'use' tax dollars.

"We know that Coleman's friends have deep pockets," Jones says. "But there are a lot of us educators, and if each does our little piece we can do a lot to re-elect Paul Wellstone."

In this neck-and-neck race, "word of mouth is more important than any political mailing," adds Desiree Payne.

In this and every other campaign, she says, "you need to let people at the water cooler know what the NEA-recommended candidate stands for, and how important the issues-like full funding for special education-- are for everyone."

In addition to Paul Wellstone, NEA recommends these other U.S. Senate candidates for election on November 5: Susan Parker (Alabama), Mark Pryor (Arkansas), Tom Strickland (Colorado), Max Cleland (Georgia), Alan Blinken (Idaho), Tom Harkin (Iowa), Richard Durbin (Illinois), Lois Combs Weinberg (Kentucky), Mary Landrieu (Louisiana), Chellie Pingree (Maine), John Kerry (Massachusetts), Carl Levin (Michigan), Jean Carnahan (Missouri), Max Baucus (Montana), Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire), Gloria Tristani (New Mexico), David Walters (Oklahoma), Bill Bradbury (Oregon), Jack Reed (Rhode Island), Alex Sanders (South Carolina), Tim Johnson (South Dakota), Bob Clement (Tennessee), Ron Kirk (Texas), and Jay Rockefeller (West Virginia).

At press time, NEA was recommending Dan Blue in a delayed North Carolina primary election.