Posted on by arotherham

Don’t Take Our Word For It…

Last week Richard Whitmire and I pointed out the National Education Association’s ideas deficit on improving schools. That was enough, of course, to get us labeled “anti-union.” But here’s Dana Goldstein in the hardly anti-union American Prospect:

The NEA, with 3.2 million members, is the larger of the national teachers’ unions but is widely seen as insufficiently committed to closing the achievement gap between middle-class white kids and low-income children of color. The AFT is smaller, with 1.4 million members, but unlike the NEA, it has long been known for its interest in raising student achievement.

Get her to a reeducation camp! And per her article, add this to the list of things on Randi Weingarten’s plate…

One Reply to “Don’t Take Our Word For It…”

  1. We must be reading different articles, or Randi must have already changed you guys.

    The article that I read and loved concludes with:

    “But even if the Democratic coalition can come together around an education agenda that includes national standards, it will still have to take the fight to conservatives. If that happens, Randi Weingarten will probably be down in the trenches, negotiating relentlessly with both reformers and Republicans. It is easy to see that she wants to be part of what Joe Williams calls “the grand bargain,” the crafting of the next big federal education-reform policy. …

    “You know, I’m probably a disruptor, by birth and by training,” Weingarten says, referring to Rep. George Miller’s term for reformers who want to work quickly to improve American schools. “I think those of us who’ve been successful in life have been ones who have actually built continuous, sustainable reform. Do you need to have people who shake things up? Of course you do. But there’s a difference between shaking up and demonizing. And between shaking up and destroying things. Change for change’s sake doesn’t work.”

    Perhaps the difference is that too many “reformers” do not actually know enouigh about real conditions in real schools to grasp Randi’s last point.

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