Randi Weingarten sees the problem and then looks the other way.
Sent to Newsweek, Dec 21, 2010
Randi Weingarten sees the real problem and then looks the other way (Gates and Weingarten: Fixing Our Nation's Schools, Dec. 20): She recognizes that child poverty in the US is much higher than in other industrialized countries (20% or more, compared to Finland and Denmark which are under 4%). She still thinks, however, that the solution is "figuring out what the best teachers do and trying to scale that up." She is apparently unaware of the fact that middle class American children who attend well-funded schools score at the top of the world on standardized tests, a finding that indicates that teaching quality is not the problem.
It's always a good idea to try to improve teaching, but the major problem is poverty. Study after study shows that
