National Education Association: "Pays Opponents Of No Child Left Behind Law"

USA Today reports that "The nation's largest teachers union has spent more than $8 million in a stealth campaign against President Bush's education reform law, paying for research and political opposition in an effort to derail it, according to a Washington think tank that supports the law." I suppose that this would appear less problematic if the research had been done before the funding was given, but the main issue is that the teachers' union secretly gave money for these studies to be done and even more important the researchers did not reveal this funding. The NEA undoubtedly knows what conclusion these researchers are going to reach even if there isn't a quid pro quo.

Interestingly, this was only discovered because of new reporting requirements. USA Today reports that "Joe Williams examined U.S. Labor Department LM-2 forms, which unions had to begin filing last year, and found that the NEA spent about $7.65 million supporting a start-up lobbying group called Communities for Quality Education, which has been critical of the law. The NEA also has funded, to a much lesser extent, other groups critical of the law, including the National Conference of Black Mayors, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the National Conference of State Legislatures and the Harvard Civil Rights Project."