The “blame the teacher crowd” would rather “affix blame than fix schools

Randi's idea doesn't solve the problems created by individuals who can't handle their jobs. We need to put the right people in the right positions, not just pretend that we can fix any teacher. It's better to put a struggling teacher in a position with less responsibility, such as assistant to a master teacher.

The “blame the teacher crowd” would rather “affix blame than fix schools,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten as she outlined a sweeping plan to “build a system of public education as it ought to be,” at AFT’s biennial convention.

AFT Leader Outlines Vision to Build Better Public Education System
by James Parks, Jul 9, 2010

Saying America’s teachers would “lead and propose, not wait and oppose,” AFT President Randi Weingarten... spoke yesterday at AFT’s biennial convention in Seattle, which runs through Sunday. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will address the convention tomorrow.

She told the more than 3,000 delegates that the “blame the teacher crowd” would rather “affix blame than fix schools.” These critics, she continued, “would have Americans believe that there is only one choice when it comes to public education: either you’re for students, or you’re for teachers,” which Weingarten called a “bogus choice.”

It’s simply wrong to suggest that there is an epidemic of bad teachers and at the same time to ignore poverty, budget cuts, the absence of curriculum, the huge attrition of good teachers—all things we know truly hamper student success.

No teacher—myself included—wants a bad teacher in any classroom. The AFT and our locals are taking real steps to solve the problem and to strengthen teaching...

AFT teachers union is moving ahead of NEA in school reform

Union head to propose tying test scores, teacher evaluations
By Nick Anderson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 12, 2010

The president of the nation's second-largest teachers union is proposing a new way to incorporate student test scores into teacher evaluations and has asked a well-known mediator to develop methods of expediting disciplinary cases against teachers, according to the text of a speech made public Monday night.

Randi Weingarten of the 1.4 million-member American Federation of Teachers plans to deliver the speech Tuesday. Union officials describe it as a major effort to address flash points in labor-management relations.

The AFT, Weingarten said, wants "a fair, transparent and expedient process to identify and deal with ineffective teachers. But [we] know we won't have that if we don't have an evaluation system that is comprehensive and robust and really tells us who is or is not an effective teacher." ...



http://voiceofsandiego.org/education/schooled/article_e1cb0cfe-ff8f-11de-b443-001cc4c03286.html

Surprise: The American Federation of Teachers, the second largest teachers union in the country, is going to propose including students' test scores in teacher evaluations and finding ways to speed up disciplinary cases against teachers. The Washington Post and USA Today explain why this is such a big deal. Bob Herbert at The New York Times contends that the union had better follow through.