Q&A: A Union Leader On Tenure, Testing And The Common Core
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Shannon DeCelle/AP |
The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is holding its annual convention in Los Angeles through this weekend. For the AFT's more than 3,500 national delegates descending on LA, there is a lot on their plate and big challenges ahead for the nation's second-largest teachers' union: the Common Core, tenure and fierce debate about testing, to name a few. We reached out to the AFT's President, Randi Weingarten, and NPR Ed's Eric Westervelt got her on the phone from the floor of the LA Convention Center.
What do you think the mood is of your members coming into this? Because one could look at it and say: Look, you've got tensions over Common Core implementation, testing and accountability. And now the big ruling in California on tenure and dismissal. I could see members saying, "we've taken it on the chin a bit in the last year. We're not feeling so great."
"Public education and educators have taken it on the chin not just last year but for several years. And so no doubt there will be frustration at this convention. But this is what I see about our members: There's tenacity and resilience and a relentlessness about the fight back. And the other side: the anti-union, anti-public education, anti-worker forces want to defeat us and want to demoralize us. And what I'm seeing at least from the activists I've bumped into is that they want to fight back and they want to fight forward. That means being solution-driven. It means being community involved. It means members have to be engaged and empowered. And frankly it means being a little badass. It's giving people a voice because so many times they don't have one."
On the Common Core, you've said you and your members like the promise. But you're worried about implementation and are frustrated about it. What, specifically, do you think your members want you as a leader to do now about Common Core implementation?
"Good question. Well first our members range from people who don't believe in standards at all to people who think standards are really important, including these new standards. You have the full range. Where there is real consensus is that they should be de-linked from testing. In all places where Core is being implemented you need to de-link high-stakes testing and you need to stop with the profit motive. We should follow what all the other countries which out-compete us do: none of them test every single student every year in every grade. They may have two or three standardized tests throughout the experience of a youngster. But there is none of this toxic, obsessive test fixation that we have in the United States today that reduces students to test scores and teachers to algorithms."
I want to ask about the Vergara case . Do you think that pushback and fight back you Q&A: A Union Leader On Tenure, Testing And The Common Core : NPR Ed : NPR: