Incoming AFT Head Seeks to Replace Testing Fixation

[Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>]

NEW VISION FOR SCHOOLS PROPOSES BROAD ROLE
New York Times -- July 14, 2008
By Sam Dillon

Randi Weingarten,  the New Yorker who is rising to become president of 
the American Federation of Teachers, says she wants to replace President 
Bush's focus on standardized testing with a vision of public schools as 
community centers that help poor students succeed by offering not only 
solid classroom lessons but also medical and other services.

Ms. Weingarten, 50, is running unopposed for the presidency of the 
national teachers union, whose delegates at an annual convention in 
Chicago are expected to elect her Monday. In a speech prepared for 
delivery after the vote, Ms. Weingarten criticizes No Child Left Behind, 
President Bush's signature domestic initiative, which is defended 
staunchly by Margaret Spellings, the secretary of education.

Ms. Weingarten, saying the law "is too badly broken to be fixed," lays 
out a "new vision of schools for the 21st century."

"Can you imagine a federal law that promoted community schools -- 
schools that serve the neediest children by bringing together under one 
roof all the services and activities they and their families need?" Ms. 
Weingarten is expected to ask in the speech, a copy of which was 
provided by the union to The New York Times.

"Imagine schools that are open all day and offer after-school and 
evening recreational activities, child care and preschool, tutoring and 
homework assistance," the speech reads. "Schools that include dental, 
medical and counseling clinics."

By laying out that expansive vision of government's role in the public 
schools, Ms. Weingarten wades into a fierce debate among Democrats 
seeking to influence the educational program of Senator Barack Obama, 
their party's presumptive presidential nominee. In an interview last 
week, she said the ideas in the speech amounted to "what I'd like to see 
in a new federal education law."

In her 10-year tenure as president of the United Federation of Teachers, 
which represents New York City teachers, Ms. Weingarten has defended 
teachers' economic interests, raising her members' salaries by 43 
percent in the last five years. But she has also proved willing to 
accommodate the city's ideas on improving schools. She has embraced 
charter schools, and last year -- even as teachers unions elsewhere were 
opposing performance pay plans -- negotiated an arrangement in New York 
that gives bonuses to teachers in schools whose poor children show broad 
gains in test scores.

With her move to the presidency of the national union, with 1.4 million 
members, Ms. Weingarten will have a broader platform from which to 
influence the nation's education debates. Although the federation is 
smaller than the country's other teachers union, the National Education 
Association, with its 3.2 million members, A.F.T. presidents have had an 
equal or larger political profile because presidential tenures in the 
bigger union are restricted by term limits.

Two previous presidents of the United Federation of Teachers, Albert 
Shanker and Sandra Feldman, also rose to lead the A.F.T.

"My sense is that Randi Weingarten is continuing Al Shanker's tradition, 
clearly standing up for the interests of teachers but also trying to 
engage in thoughtful education reform that will be good for students," 
said Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation 
whose biography of Mr. Shanker, "Tough Liberal," was published this year.

On Sunday, Mr. Obama spoke to the convention by satellite feed from 
California, and he mixed criticism of the No Child law with praise for 
teachers' contributions and an exhortation to Americans to meet the 
nation's responsibility to educate all children. He quoted a young 
Chicago teacher as telling him that she had been annoyed by a tendency 
"to explain away the shortcomings and failures of our education system 
by saying, 'These kids can't learn.' "

"These children are our children," Mr. Obama said. "It's time we 
understood that their education is our responsibility.

"I am running for president to guarantee that all of our children have 
the best possible chance in life," he said, "and I am tired of hearing 
you, the teachers who work so hard, blamed for our problems."

Convention delegates gave Mr. Obama a standing ovation.

Ms. Weingarten takes national office with robust support of the rank and 
file. "The last eight years of the Republican presidency have really 
been a threat to the middle class and to public education," said William 
Gallagher, a high school social studies teacher in Philadelphia for 33 
years. Ms Weingarten, he said, would "work hard to make sure the new 
president, whoever he is, puts education on the forefront of issues in 
this country."

In the speech Ms. Weingarten is to deliver Monday, she praises the ideas 
of a group of Democrats led by Tom Payzant, the former schools 
superintendent in Boston, who have argued that schools alone cannot 
close achievement gaps rooted in larger economic inequalities, and that 
"broader, bolder" measures are needed, like publicly financed early 
childhood education and health services for the poor.

Another group, headed by the Rev. Al Sharptong and Schools Chancellor 
Joel I. Klein of New York, issued a manifesto last month urging the 
nation to redouble its efforts to close the achievement gap separating 
poor students from affluent ones and blaming "teachers' contracts" for 
keeping ineffective teachers in classrooms.

Of the vision of Mr. Payzant's group, Ms. Weingarten's speech says, 
"Sisters and brothers, this is an idea whose time has come.

"Imagine if schools had the educational resources children need to 
thrive, like smaller classes and individualized instruction, plentiful, 
up-to-date materials and technology anchored to that rich curriculum, 
decent facilities, an early start for toddlers and a nurturing 
atmosphere," she says.

Ms. Weingarten, whose mother was a teacher in Nyack, N.Y., is a lawyer 
who was union counsel during the 1980s and 1990s. In the last decade, 
Ms. Weingarten taught high school history for six years in the Crown 
Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn.

In the interview, she said: "We all have to work tenaciously to 
eliminate the achievement gap and to turn around low-performing schools. 
But the folks who believe that this can all be done on teachers' 
shoulders, which is what No Child tries to do, are doing a huge 
disservice to America."

  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/14/education/14teachers.html