As NEA Prepares to Meet, Rising Star Seeks Re-Election

At the National Education Association’s upcoming annual conference, Secretary-Treasurer Lily Eskelsen intends to go onstage to announce record-high membership numbers: The union’s locals have added more than 30,000 new teachers to their rolls this year.

She calls it “the silver lining” in the No Child Left Behind Act, explaining that, as she sees it, more and more teachers are realizing the importance of becoming part of the debate over the federal law.

The same delegates who will descend on Orlando, Fla., June 30 through July 5, will also see another, now-familiar side of Ms. Eskelsen: a folk-song-singing, guitar-strumming critic of the law whose lyrics portray its requirements as ridiculous and even dangerous—so much so that she calls...