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The new president of the largest teachers union in the country will become the voice of roughly 3 million teachers at perhaps the most critical moment in the National Education Association’s history.

First item on the agenda: Win back the public.

Union watchers say the newly elected Lily Eskelsen García — a former school cafeteria worker teacher, folk singer and Utah teacher of the year — has a “hell of a job” ahead of her. She faces court cases challenging teacher tenure and job protections, the defection of historically loyal Democrats, growing apprehension over the Common Core, diminishing ranks, public relations campaigns painting her union as greedy and a complicated chessboard of state and local members with a variety of interests.

Eskelsen García, elected Friday, has big plans: She wants to further shift the union away from its longstanding and reflexive support of Democrats — which it has already begun. She wants to banish what she says is a loaded word — tenure. And she wants to lead a campaign against high-stakes decision-making based on test scores at the same time she firms up her union’s support of the Common Core.

But to do any of it, she has to make clear not just what the union is against, but what it’s for, said Joe Williams, executive director of Democrats for Education Reform.

In an interview with POLITICO, Eskelsen García said indeed, the union must be clear about its agenda.

“People will take a bad idea if we don’t offer them something better,” she said.

DRAWING BATTLE LINES

At the union’s annual convention last week in Denver, where Eskelsen García was officially elected, some teachers said it’s time for a leader who will play hardball with the feds and push back against Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s agenda, which includes evaluating teachers in part by student test scores and supporting the growth of charter schools, often staffed by non-union teachers.

“We need a fresh face for the NEA, someone who will stand up to the conservatives — and stand up to Arne Duncan and say, ‘We don’t agree with your plans,’” said Reed Bretz, a high school fine arts teacher in the Kenowa Hills public schools in Grand Rapids, Mich. Current President “Dennis [Van Roekel] has tried to be too nice. He’s tried to play in the sandbox and it hasn’t worked.”

Eskelsen García already has fiery words for the feds, who she holds responsible for the growing use of “value-added measures,” or VAMs, an algorithm that aims to assess teacher effectiveness by student growth on standardized tests. The idea has gained traction under the Obama administration through waivers from No Child Left Behind and the administration’s signature Race to the Top program. But studies, including some funded by the Education Department, have cast doubt on the validity of the measures.

VAMs “are the mark of the devil,” Eskelsen García said.

The algorithms do aim to account for variables such as student poverty levels. But Eskelsen García said they can’t capture the complete picture.

The year she taught 22 students in one class and the year she taught 39 students in one class — “Is that factored into a value-added model? No,” she said. “Did they factor in the year that we didn’t have enough textbooks so all four fifth-grade teachers had to share them on a cart and I couldn’t send any books home to do homework with my kids?”

“It’s beyond absurd,” she added. “And anyone who thinks they can defend that is trying to sell you something.”

Reform advocates point out that VAM scores are never the only factor in a teacher’s evaluations. Principal observations and other factors are also weighted. They urge the union to embrace accountability and work to improve it, rather than resist it.

“We’re 20 years into the standards and accountability movement and accountability isn’t going away,” said Celine Coggins, founder of Teach Plus. “So how can teachers own that? How can that be part of the profession and part of how the profession defines itself, rather than have it be something that’s done to teachers?”

Duncan said he believes the department will find “common ground” with the union and and strengthen what he called their “longstanding partnership” to improve public education.

“I congratulate Lily for her election as NEA president — she is a passionate advocate and strong voice for educators,” he said. “I know we will find common ground on behalf of our nation’s students and educators, and I look forward to working with her to continue our collaborative relationship with NEA and its leadership.”

PUTTING OUT FIRES

But NEA recently split with the Education Department on a court ruling out of California that struck down job protections defended by unions.

“The world looks different today than it would have looked a month ago to a new NEA president because of Vergara,” said Ben Austin, executive director of Parent Revolution, an education reform group that often clashes with unions. Austin pointed to a new poll showing California voters uneasy with the tenure and job protection laws that unions have fought to defend. “The teachers union now finds itself politically isolated in the bluest state in the nation,” Austin said.

Eskelsen García must navigate that minefield carefully because the “public will smell bullshit from a mile away,” Williams said.

“The general public thinks it’s absurd that they’re willing to go so far to defend what seems indefensible,” he said. “They’ve got to shift the conversation to fairness for teachers. The public loves teachers, but they don’t want to stick up for bureaucratic processes.”

Eskelsen García said that going forward, the union must emphasize that tenure doesn’t mean teachers have a job for life, it simply ensures due process when they face dismissal.

“Too many people have been told that it’s impossible to fire a teacher,” she said. “We want to stand for a reasonable due process when someone is about to lose their job. They should know why, they should be able to defend themselves … part of the bully pulpit that I have is to at least explain to the public that we’re talking about due process for educators.”

But unions have been explaining that to the public for more than a year — and emphasized that point over and over in the Vergara trial — and it hasn’t notably shifted public opinion. And while Eskelsen García hopes to banish the word “tenure,” which she says has negative connotations, no amount of union pressure can stop opponents from using the phrase.

A TEACHER’S TEACHER

Sitting on the couch in her office wearing a pressed white dress and gauzy pink scarf, Eskelsen García smiles at the wall where pictures of her past classes hang with pride. She points to her younger self with a mass of black hair (she irons it flat every day now) and remembers the year she taught 39 fifth graders at once.

“What I want to bring [to the NEA presidency] is that voice that says — unashamedly and without any modesty whatsoever — I was the teacher of the year,” she said. “And I was the Utah Teacher of the Year for a very good reason: Because I could get my kids to want to do their homework. To love to read the next chapter in Charlotte’s Web. To do project-based learning. And I think our members — and our potential members, by the way — want someone who’s going to stand up and speak that classroom teacher truth.”

She beat her opponent Mark Airgood by a wide margin. Airgood, who opposes the Common Core and is eager to take on affirmative action and immigrant rights, had little visible support at the union’s convention last week. But buttons and T-shirts supporting the “Elect Lily Committee” peppered the convention.

Several convention delegates said they found Eskelsen García endearing and her life story inspirational.

“I’m a huge fan of Lily. I think she’s very personable. She’s someone I can have a conversation with,” said Jess Hoertel, a sixth grade language arts teacher in Jefferson Township, N.J. She described Van Roekel as “a little out of touch” and “very serious,” whereas Eskelsen García is more of a “people person.”

Eskelsen García, formerly NEA’s vice president, is assuming the presidency from Van Roekel, who has led the union since 2008. Her term is three years long with an option to run for re-election once.

She has a long history of activism: When she was named Utah’s top teacher in 1989, she used the title as leverage to protest the state’s inadequate education funding. She was elected president of the Utah Education Association one year later.

In 1996, she was elected to NEA’s executive committee. She even won her party’s nomination for U.S. Congress in 1998, but lost when she earned 45 percent of the vote against her Republican incumbent. She also served as a member of former President Bill Clinton’s White House Strategy Session on Improving Hispanic Education in 2000.

Eskelsen García, now 59, has made a point to be visible and accessible during her time at NEA: She writes occasionally for her blog, Lily’s Blackboard. She plans to ramp up that blogging as president, though she’s the first to say that her tendency to speak her mind leaves her staff a little on edge.

Last year during a Netroots Nation panel discussion, she spoke out against politicians in Washington who refused to pass common sense measures to prevent gun violence. Her words quickly went viral: “People who were elected to protect us have allegiances to the gun industry and they have allowed this to happen. They’ve allowed it happen sometimes because the gun industry saw a true believer and helped them get into office … But others are just afraid of the gun industry and they don’t want to make any noise. And I’m not an ordained theologian, I’m not a minister, but these guys [elected officials] are going to hell…that is my daily prayer.”

During NEA’s 2012 Representative Assembly, she showcased her folk singer roots with a rendition of the National Anthem.

She has been open about personal hardships. Her husband of 38 years, Ruel Eskelsen, killed himself in March 2011. Eskelsen García, mother of two grown sons, harnessed union members, asking them to write to her adopted son Jared. He was in prison for theft at the time and couldn’t attend the memorial service.

Last year, she married Alberto García, an artist she met in Mexico. The couple is navigating U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services so he can legally live in the country.

She jokes that her Spanish sounds better than it actually is. Her mother, from Panama, was trilingual. But Eskelsen García said her mother never taught her Spanish, thinking people in the U.S. wouldn’t want to hear it. Eskelsen García decided to learn the language to honor her mother’s culture.

NAVIGATING POLITICAL WATERS

Eskelsen García, who takes the helm Sept. 1, will be steering the ship at a critical time as states head into the thick of midterm elections. Mark Naison, co-founder of the militant union splinter group, the Badass Teachers Association, said NEA has to “stop reflexively supporting Democratic candidates who are supporting policies that take power away from teachers.”

Others think that the union needs to play up the importance of politics.

“We do need to sell ourselves a little better, both to the general public and to our own members,” said Martha Patterson, a special education teacher at an elementary school in Bremerton, Wash. She said she sees many union members tuning out of political campaigns because the NEA officers haven’t been able to persuade them that elections matter.

Eskelsen García said the union has to branch out beyond the Democratic party, endorsing candidates across the spectrum that give teachers more power. The union wants to know where candidates stand on equity and wants to endorse politicians who understand that “a student is more than a test score,” she said.

The NEA has already begun to support some Republicans, including several candidates for state legislature in Florida.

COMMON CORE CONFLICT

Eskelsen García is likely to come under pressure from some members, including the Badass Teachers Association, to renounce the Common Core.

But there’s no chance of García backing off completely. She even has a favorite Common Core standard.

Van Roekel famously said earlier this year that Common Core implementation is “botched” and requires a “course correction.” Eskelsen García said there’s nothing wrong with hitting the “pause button” to make sure states and districts are getting it right.

The Gates Foundation recently proposed temporarily suspending high-stakes accountability measures based on Common Core-aligned tests for that reason — which was an important announcement, Eskelsen García noted.

But NEA’s new leader realizes that Gates, which has donated to the NEA Foundation for the Improvement of Education, isn’t so popular with the union’s members.

“They funded the Common Core,” Eskelsen García said. “And for some of our folks, it’s like, ‘But the Gates Foundation funded the Common Core, so we must be suspect. It’s corporate. It’s Bill Gates — the mega billionaire!’ But I don’t see it that way. I see the Gates Foundation as funding ideas.”

If she had to grade the Gates Foundation, Eskelsen García said she’d give it a B+. She questions some of the foundation’s investments, like Teach for America and the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

But Gates has supported “one thousand and two” great ideas that make perfect sense — the Common Core being one of them, she said. When the standards were still an idea, Eskelsen García said she told the Gates Foundation that it can expect a partner in the NEA on higher standards.

But she also warned them.

“I said I’ll be your personal nightmare if you betray high standards” by trying to cram them into a standardized, commercial, mass-produced test.

“Because you can’t do that with my favorite standards,” she said.

Stephanie Simon contributed to this report.