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The politics of American public education are pretty polarized at the moment. In a column for the Daily Beast today, I argue that a leaked document from the National Education Association suggests that things appear likely to worsen before they improve:

The substance of an organization’s public-relations strategy can reveal a lot. Which gets to the real importance of the document. It’s a powerful piece of proof that the NEA is planning to be as confrontational as possible in . This has seemed likely for a while—and for a number of reasons: Its criticism of the Obama administration’s education reforms, controversies related to the Common Core State Standards, the rise of radical groups like the , Eskelson García’s increasingly forceful rhetoric, and many more.

The document’s stated purpose is unambiguous: to “engage the base, persuade the middle, and alienate the opposition.” The document also notes that focus groups who heard the new messaging struggled with education policy’s “complex chatter [so] we must draw clear distinctions between what we believe and what our opponents contend.”

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