Unmasking the “Blame the Teacher” Crowd
Guest post by Tim Daly, President, The New Teacher Project
The hunt has intensified recently for a shadowy menace: the “blame-the-teacher crowd.” Everyone seems to be on the case, from major magazinesto pundits on Twitter. This anti-teacher cabal has grown so powerful that it took center stage at the conventions of the national teachers’ unions last month. AFT president Randi Weingarten spoke of being “shaken to the core” at witnessing “so few attack so many, so harshly, for doing so much.” NEA president Dennis Van Roekel warned of an effort to “blame teachers and our unions for every problem in a school.”
Strangely, nobody can credibly identify any members of this nefarious crowd. We know who’s not in the group. Not Barack Obama, who has made clear that he is “110 percent behind our teachers,” and made good on it by supporting tens of billions of dollars to save
The hunt has intensified recently for a shadowy menace: the “blame-the-teacher crowd.” Everyone seems to be on the case, from major magazinesto pundits on Twitter. This anti-teacher cabal has grown so powerful that it took center stage at the conventions of the national teachers’ unions last month. AFT president Randi Weingarten spoke of being “shaken to the core” at witnessing “so few attack so many, so harshly, for doing so much.” NEA president Dennis Van Roekel warned of an effort to “blame teachers and our unions for every problem in a school.”
Strangely, nobody can credibly identify any members of this nefarious crowd. We know who’s not in the group. Not Barack Obama, who has made clear that he is “110 percent behind our teachers,” and made good on it by supporting tens of billions of dollars to save