Do teachers have a right to be involved in politics?

The Washington Post has seen fit to run yet another editorial attacking the Montgomery County Education Association and its political activism.   One must wonder why the Post, given its stated support of reform efforts in public education, chooses to single out the local teachers and their union who have done more than any other in the area to bring such efforts to fruition.  MCEA has a long and meaningful history of partnering with Montgomery County Public Schools to improve teaching and learning.  The Post itself recognized this when it ran a front page article on (6/29/09) about our Peer Assistance and Review (PAR) program.   PAR is only one part of the jointly designed and managed Teacher Professional Growth System, which is a model teacher evaluation system for school systems around the country and abroad.  Maryland’s schools have been ranked #1 in the nation for five years by Education Week- in no small part due to the student achievement gains that are the focus, indeed the commitment, of the educators of MCPS.

The Post alleges that MCEA has sold its endorsement but offers no evidence to substantiate this claim. We have never traded our support for financial contributions. Never have and never will. Every candidate we recommend is someone we believe will be an advocate for public education. In fact, many of the candidates recommended by MCEA have been recommended by the Post editorial board as well. 

The criteria we use are posted on our website. The Post itself has noted the transparency of our process (which one might note, is markedly more democratic and open than the process the Post’s editorial board itself uses).  We do not apologize for our efforts to inform voters about the candidates our members, the people trusted to care for, challenge, and teach the students of MCPS, believe will best support them in their work. 

In 2006 and to a lesser extent in 2010, we accepted voluntary donations from candidates who recognized that pooling their resources to publicize their support for public education and from educators was an effective means of informing the voting public and seeking its support. The coordinated mailings fully complied with all Maryland campaign finance laws.  No donations were sought or accepted until well after our recommendation process was completed. All contributions were reported to the State Board of Elections. There was no quid-pro-quo - candidates did not have to donate a cent to our coordinated campaign. Some did. Some didn’t. Their choice.

Do we advocate for our members?  Of course we do.  Do we want them to have the resources they need to do their best every day for students?  No doubt.  Do we want politicians who will work with us to protect our classrooms? Absolutely. We want high quality teachers, lower class sizes, and increased funding to help close the achievement gap. So do the candidates we recommend. 

So why is the Post so vitriolic in its smear campaign against MCEA? Josh Kurtz, a senior editor at Roll Call, concluded in 2009 that the Post’s “unbridled ferocity”  was an effort “to reassert its power over Montgomery County elections… by tear(ing) down the institution it sees as its biggest rival for winning the hearts and minds of county voters”. John Farrell, a contributing writer at U.S. News & World Report wrote at that time that the Post’s editorials were “semi-hysterical” and that the paper “owes the teachers a correction, if not an apology, for recklessly tossing around words like ‘corrupt’ and ‘shakedown’.”

We believe that voters deserve to have as much information as possible in order to make informed decisions. We will not back down from our advocacy for our schools, any more than we will lessen our efforts in the classroom every day to help all our students be successful.