Endorse Obama this July?

At last summer’s NEA convention in New Orleans the delegates voted no confidence in Obama’s Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

At this summer’s NEA convention in Chicago the delegates will be asked to endorse Obama.

The administration ignored the last vote.

Will this vote make us even more irrelevant?

Can we at least attach conditions? Ending three wars? Firing Duncan?

NEA President Dennis Van Roekel in Valerie Strauss’ column:

“I took into consideration where that party is in leadership now, and of course any Republican candidate for president will stay on that line, which is very much anti-collective bargaining and anti-public education,” he said.

This is a rather different view than Van Roekel had less than a year ago at the NEA’s annual convention last July. There, while speaking about the Obama administration policies, he said, according to The New York Times: “This is not the change I hoped for. ”