AFT's Weingarten Talks Michelle Rhee, Common Core, Pitfalls in Obama's Education Strategy
Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, has famously called for a moratorium on high-stakes standardized testing until states and districts have totally and completely implemented the Common Core State Standards.
The first round of tests linked to the common core aren't supposed to hit states until the 2014-15 school year ... so when does Weingarten think that states will be ready to go forward with holding schools accountable for getting students to meet standards that have been adopted by 46 states and the District of Columbia?
We still don't know the answer on that one. She wouldn't pinpoint a date certain during an interview that will air on C-SPAN's Newsmakers.
"There are some places you can see the transition taking a year, and some places ... take what John White just did in Louisiana, he's saying the transition is going to take 10 years," she told me during the C-SPAN interview. "The point is, the moment that you start this transition in a thoughtful way kids will succeed."
I also asked Weingarten whether she had changed her tune on the education overhaul plan in the District of Columbia, which included a much-more robust teacher-evaluation system that took into account growth on student test scores. When those were rolled out, Weingarten's union fought