The NEA and AFT: Teacher Unions in Power and Politics.

• Author: Weele, Maribeth Vander

America's swerve to the right last November put the nation's two teachers unions in the crosshairs of critics of failing education. Republican-controlled state legislatures, giddy with the prospect of dressing down the powerful, traditionally Democratic unions, have produced a spate of proposals that threaten union strength, such as reducing union bargaining leverage and giving districts the freedom to more strictly punish striking teachers.

A book, then, about the powerhouse teacher unions - the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers - couldn't have come at a better time. The NEA and AFT: Teacher Unions in Power and Politics is a clarion call for policymakers to understand these important players in education and politics. This is made afl the more urgent by the potential merger between the two unions. Talks between the two long-running rivals have broken off for now, but may resume in the future.

The NEA is already the largest union in North America, and perhaps the world, with 2.2 million members. The merged teacher union would surge to a membership unprecedented by any union anywhere. "It would be the Goliath of labor," write authors Myron Lieberman, Charlene Haar, and Leo Troy. The merged union would number 2.5 to 2.7 million members initially; it could add an additional million within a decade.

This book provides valuable insight into how the NEA and AFT amassed their power, but it fails to explore a critical question: how that power undermines the best interest of children.

It barely mentions the wretched school building conditions that result when maintenance fails are diverted to teacher salaries; the harm to students when incompetent teachers cannot be dismissed because the unions have negotiated contracts that make firing bad teachers nearly impossible; and the fact that would-be parent volunteers are kept out of schools because their work threatens paid union labor.

In contrast, the authors go into ponderous detail about arguments over secret ballots at union conventions; varying estimates on the size of union membership; and the internal politics over the merger issue. The authors could have summarized such information and deftly relegated the details to endnotes for culling by only the most curious union aficionado. Indeed, the importance of these topics to the question of the quality of public school education is comparatively minor.

Despite its shortcomings, The NEA and AFT draws a useful...