01:00 AM EST on Saturday, January 28, 2006

Thanks to new federal accounting rules, requiring labor unions to spell out where they get their money and what they spend it on, citizens are gaining insight into the activities of these often politically potent groups. Information about one of the most powerful, the National Education Association, makes for especially interesting reading.

The national NEA took in about $295 million from dues during the September 2004 - through - August 2005 reporting period (with total receipts of $341 million), and spent about a third of that on salaries and benefits of NEA executives, employees, and retirees. NEA President Reg Weaver received total compensation of $370,428. About $58 million was divided among more than 600 people who collected wages from NEA headquarters -- rounding out to about $90,000 per person.

The national NEA spent $47 million on "representational activities," such as bargaining contracts; $25 million on political activities and lobbying; $64 million on overhead; and $65 million on contributions, gifts, and grants, many to political causes associated with the Democratic Party.

At the local level, National Education Association Rhode Island reported giving total compensation of more than $100,000 to nine people: Executive Director Robert Walsh ($142,015); Deputy Executive Director Vin Santaniello ($131,952); President Larry Purtill ($116,332); General Counsel John Decubellis ($109,862); Business Manager Walter Young ($106,306); and field representatives Jane Argenteri ($108,790), Jerry Egan ($110,111), Robert Roy ($103,985), and Jeannette Woolley ($107,252). Another four received total compensation of $86,000 or more.

The Rhode Island NEA spent $63,432 on "public relations" at Warwick's Cornerstone Communications, the company of Guy Dufault, who last made news by promising to defeat Governor Carcieri by revealing the names of Mr. Carcieri's apparently nonexistent girlfriends. Another $58,800 went to WorkingRI, a political group opposed to the governor also linked to Mr. Dufault.

(The Rhode Island chapter of the American Federation of Teachers also filed a report, showing five employees each receiving more than $100,000: President Marcia Reback [$128,542], Director of Professional Issues Colleen Callahan Delan [$116,243], and field representatives Robert Casey [$125,656], Michael Mullane [$116,243], and James Parisi [$116,243]. The AFT gave $5,000 to Cornerstone Communications, and $7,500 to the lobbying group Citizens for a Representative Government, also associated with Mr. Dufault, which helped block a constitutional convention in Rhode Island.)

If serving the unions' economic interests is the goal, it is hard to argue that these local leaders have been overpaid.

How well that has served the state's students is, of course, up for debate. Although Rhode Island taxpayers are commendably among America's most generous in spending on public education, the results are ambiguous.

Even adjusting for poverty, Rhode Island performed worse than statistically expected on National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) math tests, according to a recent analysis by Standard & Poor's School Evaluation Services. (In that analysis, other underperforming states in math tests included Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii and Nevada.) Meanwhile, next door, Massachusetts set a shining example of what can be accomplished in a heavily Democratic state with strong teachers' unions: It outscored the rest of America both in raw NAEP scores and in those adjusted for poverty. Congratulations!

The 2006 NEA Rhode Island agenda calls for: increased spending on schools; reduced class sizes (translating into more teachers); shifting more of the burden of school spending onto state government from the localities; stopping privatization or outsourcing of jobs; revising pension reforms passed last year by the General Assembly; and removing any barriers on public employees' and their spouses' running for public office.

That is an agenda that would keep money and power flowing to the teachers' unions, something they are well within their rights to seek. But it's fair to ask how much good it would do our struggling students.