Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, March 10, 1994                   TAG: 9403100164
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

VEA IN CHARGE

1. Should licensing and training standards for public employees be set by representatives of the public?

2. When an organization has to cut staff, should work performance be a factor in deciding whose job to eliminate?

If you answered "yes" to both questions, you deserve an "A." Unfortunately, the Virginia Education Association would flunk you.

This week the VEA gave a lesson in lobbying Richmond. Caving in to the politically active association, assembly members voted to remove the teacher-certification process from state control and give it to an independent board dominated by teachers.

Never mind an apparent conflict with the state constitution, which places authority for teacher licensing where it belongs, with the state Board of Education.

Never mind the objection raised reasonably by Sen. Elliot Schewel, D-Lynchburg, and others: that overseeing teacher standards, including license revocations and training requirements, is one of the means by which the state governs and can improve public-school quality.

No question, teachers need to be accorded a more professional status. Teachers also are central, or should be, to efforts to reform education in the commonwealth. But as public employees, they are not equivalent to the medical profession, for example, whose members' licensing standards are governed by an autonomous board.

And if it aspires so to professional recognition, why did the education association also extract from compliant legislators a bill that will protect teachers with seniority when school systems are forced to lay off workers?

This hardly smacks of professionalism. Unionism is more like it.

Compelled to choose between lobbyists' agendas and the public interest, lawmakers during assembly sessions are constantly tested. This week, they won high marks from the Virginia Education Association, but failed Virginia's schoolchildren.

The final grade, administered by Gov. Allen, should feature a veto.

Keywords:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1994