I am a member of the AFT and not NEA. I have to say that there has never been "party line" on software that I have heard. The gratuitous chucking of rocks at the NEA is an easy cheap shot so the respondant took it. The reality of it is teacher's unions are not directive of their members. The members direct the organization. This is done by way of annual or triennial elections of officers. What does this have to with Linux? Simply put it means that there is not a political bias toward Windows. There is an educational bias for Windows that runs from this thinking "Education prepares our youth for the real world. In the real world Windows is what is used in the 90% of the installed computers. To properly prepare our students to function in the real world they will need to know their way around a Windows environment." It is really that simple. It has nothing to do with Microsoft and everything to do with preparing students to use the installed machines in the real world. If Linux should become the dominant OS in the future I would hope that the educational establishment, and individual teachers, would provide ready access to Linux in the clasroom.