AFT’S Weingarten: School reformers ignore “elephant in the room”
WASHINGTON - So-called school "reformers," bent on closing "failing" schools, ignore "the elephant in the room," poverty, that accounts for poor student performance, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten says.
Speaking in mid-October to an Economic Policy Institute forum, the teachers union head also challenged a right wing myth, and a right wing goal: That most public schools are failing and that education should be turned over to the private sector, and that tests should be the exclusive measure of a school's and a teacher's effectiveness.
Instead, she said, studies and comparisons with the U.S. "peer group" of developed nations show improvements in students' learning across the board in the last two decades. The catch is that the improvements are uneven, with schools that sit in high-poverty areas still trailing behind.
Weingarten was one of several panelists who challenged the prevailing mythology about schools, including the teach-to-the-test goals the right wing has imposed on U.S. schools, starting with anti-worker and anti-public teacher President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind law in 2001.
Both the AFT and the nation's other teachers union, the National Education Association, strongly criticized the law. At one point NEA and its Michigan affiliates sued to stop it, saying Congress promised funds for