NEA Vetting Clinton

National Education Association (NEA) President Lilly Eskelsen Garcia has interviewed Hillary Rodham Clinton as part of the NEA’s vetting process before announcing the union officials’ presidential endorsement for 2016.  Miguel Gonzales has the report on nea.org.

Today, NEA president Lily Eskelsen García met with Secretary Hillary Clinton as part of the Association’s recommendation process for the 2016 presidential campaign. NEA, the largest union in the country with nearly 3 million members, launched in earnest its recommendation process earlier this year. All viable presidential candidates from both political parties were invited to participate in NEA’s presidential recommendation process. Further below are excerpts from Secretary Hillary Clinton.

“Secretary Clinton and I had a frank and robust conversation about what is at stake in this upcoming election,” said NEA President Lily Eskelsen García. “Recommending a candidate for president of the United States is a civic responsibility that educators take seriously. We know the stakes are high, and going through the process to pick the right candidate that represents the values of educators, students, and their families is critically important.”[Eskelsen]“Educators are going to ask the tough questions that get to the heart of the issues that they, their students and families are facing every day. They see what is happening in their schools and communities. They know that all students deserve the support, tools, and time to learn. But are politicians willing to commit to the success of every student regardless of his or her zip code? That is the key question that educators will ask over and over again. Because when all students succeed, we not only create strong public schools, we are building a stronger America.”

[Hillary Clinton] “What we can do together to deal with the issues we know are at the real core of making it possible to look at every little boy and girl and say ‘yes, you will have the best chances we can give you.’”

“Are tests important? Yes. Do we need accountability? Yes. But we’ve gotten off track in what we test and what we test for that we sacrifice so much else in the curriculum, in the school day and school year.”

“So many of our poorer schools have cut off all the extracurricular activities. We’ve taken away band, in so many places we’ve taken away a lot of the sports. We’ve taken away arts classes. We’ve taken away school productions.”

“I would like to see us get back to looking at individual children, looking at age appropriate learning experiences, looking at enriching the classroom experience.”