Teachers’ leader: Schools reflect society’s polarization and anger
WASHINGTON (PAI) - The "polarization and anger" running through U.S. society, as a result of the collapse of the American Dream, "is playing out in the schools as well," Teachers President Randi Weingarten warns.
In a free-flowing talk and Q & A at the Women's National Democratic Club in D.C. on Dec. 12, the head of the 1.5-million-member union adds the conflict appears in fights over charter schools, state and local school funding cuts, and even in the Obama administration, in its emphasis on business-like practices in schools and on test scores.
Weingarten's remarks came as Congress is stalled, yet again, on what to do about federal school funding, and as Democratic President Barack Obama and his Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, emphasize their "race to the top" program, egging schools on with additional federal funds - if the schools improve test scores.
That teach-to-the-test ethos riles both parents and teachers, Weingarten told the group, as it assumes teachers can solve all of society's problems in the schools, and they can't. And parents are upset because subjects that actually would draw their kids into school and make it a place to learn, like music and art, are sacrificed, she said.
"There's a conversation that says teachers, who are viewed as a combination of Mother Teresa, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King and Tony Soprano, can do it all. People want us to be angels - just like at Sandy Hook" during the school massacre there a year ago, she noted.
"They want us to turn it all around ourselves, and if we can't we should be fired."
The big reason teachers can't do it themselves, Weingarten said, is poverty, a theme she's emphasized before. The problems at low-performing schools, which are usually those in the poorest neighborhoods, lead to searches for "silver-bullet solutions" such as vouchers and charter schools, she added. Test data show little improvement.
"Testing is important," she admitted. "But it really says that something didn't happen in the engagement" between teachers and kids. And the success of such interaction drops, Weingarten told the group, when state and local officials slash education funding.
The results included 300,000 teachers, out of 3 million nationwide, laid off after stimulus money ran out and a