NEA wants Bush to dismiss Paige

A day after Education Secretary Rod Paige compared the nation's largest teachers union to a "terrorist organization" because of its criticism of President Bush's centerpiece education law, the union brushed aside his apologies and called for his dismissal.

"Our members are the NEA, and on behalf of them, I ask President Bush to express his regret to the nation's educators and demand that Secretary Paige step down," said the union's president, Reg Weaver.

And in the House, Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., also called on Paige to resign. She characterized his remarks "neo-McCarthyism at its worst."

The reactions made public an often bitter struggle between the Bush administration and the 2.7 million-member National Education Association, which often supports the Democratic Party at election time. The administration and the union have been at odds practically since January 2002 when the president signed the law, which expands the use of tests to raise student achievement and is known as No Child Left Behind.

The union sees the law as a barely concealed effort to weaken public education and build support for vouchers.

In July, Weaver, the union president, told delegates at the NEA's annual meeting that the union had intended to sue the Education Department for failing to finance the law fully. Paige shot back that supporters of the law were assembled in a "coalition of the winning" but that "the NEA wants to assemble a coalition of the whining."

That was one of many rhetorical jabs that Paige has directed not only at the union but also at critics of the law like groups representing school superintendents and state legislators. In recent months he has called such critics "nihilists" and compared them to obstructionist French diplomats at the United Nations as well as to the bigots who opposed desegregation.

In a White House meeting with governors on Monday, Paige "said he considered the NEA to be a terrorist organization," his spokeswoman, Susan Aspey, said. He quickly apologized, but those remarks as well as mounting irritation with the law among many educators appeared to have pushed groups that are often at odds into unusual alliances.

The American Federation of Teachers, a union that has 1.3 million members, and is a rival, closed ranks with the NEA on Tuesday.