I’ll be hitting the road over the next three weeks to do some reporting out in my home state of California.
For the first week, I’ll be at the Council of Chief State School Officers’ assessment conference, in Los Angeles. Look for some blog items on testing over at Curriculum Matters, in addition to posts here at Teacher Beat. I’ve even arranged for some guest-bloggers, so fear not: There will be plenty of juicy teacher-policy news for you.
Now, with all this recent talk of the American Federation of Teachers and Randi Weingarten, you may be wondering what happened to that OTHER union;—you know, the one with 3.2 million members. Well, we’ll soon have some answers, because starting at the beginning of July, I’ll be bringing you live coverage from San Diego of the NEA Representative Assembly. At this annual event, the 9,000 delegates to the RA set new policies and procedures.
I’ll have tidbits for you from Dennis Van Roekel’s first solo speech to the RA, the scoop on an address by Education Secretary Arne Duncan on the teacher-quality assurance in the education-stimulus bill, and, I hope, some updates on what new initiatives the NEA’s got brewing.
Of course, hard-hitting journalist that I am, I’ll also be curious to see whether the mild-mannered Van Roekel will dance on stage to disco hits, as his predecessor Reg Weaver famously did.