“I know what you’re against. What are you for?”
The late State Sen. Vince Demuzio, possibly the best friend Illinois education employees ever had, posed that question many years ago. He believed that education employees only reacted to education improvement proposals made by others, never making their own proposals. And he noted that the reaction to the outside ideas was almost always negative.
Demuzio believed educators should show leadership on education quality issues. His comment led IEA leaders to begin working seriously on a quality education agenda.
Over the years, that agenda has evolved and the newest incarnation is found in Illinois Priority One the document that provides a blueprint for reforming school quality and accountability in Illinois.
Priority One helped guide development of Accountability for All, the education reform proposal co-developedf by IEA, The Illinois Federation of Teaxchers and the Chicago Teachers Union.
Read a summary of Accountability for All.
Illinois Education Association is an association of more than 130,000 members composed of Illinois elementary and secondary teachers, higher education faculty and staff, educational support professionals, retired educators and college students preparing to become teachers.
With all due respect to the late senator, I never thought that the evolution of our organization from a “union” to a “professional organization” was the result of Demuzio or anyone in the Legislature for that matter. In fact, it was the late 90′s when NEA President, Bob Chase introduced the blueprint for the “new unionism” in which he called for state and local organization to redefine themselves as groups that not only fought for salary and working conditions, etc., but for teacher unions to, “become a strong advocate for the professional side of the education equation.”
We need not look no further that our own roots to credit the changes (for the better) that have taken place with teacher unionism.