MAD AND MOBILIZED

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Nowhere is the battle line drawn more clearly than on the subject of school choice. It has been touted as an all-purpose panacea: let parents shop around and they will reward good schools over bad, forcing the bad ones to play catch-up, thus improving quality overall. President Clinton has embraced this idea in the form of "charter schools"--public schools that throw out all the rules, including union rules, and start over--and some local teachers' unions have slowly come around to endorsing these experiments. But the unions draw the line (as has the President, so far) at giving students public funds to attend private schools, including religious schools, on the ground that siphoning off money and motivated students will destroy public education. "We are unalterably opposed to vouchers," says incoming N.E.A. president Bob Chase.

Christian conservatives, on the other hand, are unalterably committed to vouchers as the best way to gain control over what their children learn. But until the day that vouchers can subsidize religious academies and home schooling, the Christian Coalition will be very active on local school boards, where it often faces off against the teachers' unions on curriculum and rules. Training materials for a seminar the Coalition ran last year in Atlanta state that the "strategy must be to weaken the teacher unions financially. Any success in achieving this objective will facilitate virtually all conservative objectives, educational and noneducational."

Given that, it's not surprising that Chase, for one, believes Dole's San Diego attack was meant "to placate the far right." That's not the case, a Dole staff member insists. The real issue: "We need an enemy besides Clinton. Sometimes you're defined by your enemies--and [teachers' unions] are a great enemy to have." At the same time, Dole says he is not a teacher basher. "Maybe I don't make it clear enough, but teachers do a good job," he told TIME. "This is about the people at the top who won't let President Clinton make any reforms." But, says Kathy Bell, a Republican teacher from Florida who sits on the N.E.A. executive committee and feels "really hurt" by Dole's attacks, "anyone who tries to divide unions from teachers really doesn't understand the concept."

Yet it is not only the religious right that has grown frustrated with teacher-union tactics. Around the country, local officials complain about lengthy, bitter contract fights and union rules that make it nearly impossible to fire bad teachers. In Texas, for instance, a right-to-work state where the teachers' unions have limited clout, it could have taken 2 1/2 years to terminate an incompetent teacher until new legislation was passed last year. In New Jersey, where the New Jersey Education Association contributes more to local and state campaigns than any other organization, battles between the local school boards and the N.J.E.A. often involve hardball tactics: in Madison last fall, teachers stopped writing college recommendations for seniors after they had worked nine months without a new contract. Yet even the N.J.E.A, says Lynne Strickland, director of the Garden State Coalition, a lobbying group for 118 suburban school districts, is making some "midcourse corrections" and now supports charter schools.