In an interview published in The Hechinger Report, Randi Weingarten expresses her belief that Hillary Clinton will change course from the Obama education policies. She expects that a President Clinton would select a new Secretary of Education, one who shares her expressed belief in strengthening public schools and supporting teachers.
Emmanuel Felton, who conducted the interview, writes:
While teachers unions have long been a key pillar in Democratic Party, they’ve been on the outs with President Barack Obama’s education department. The administration doubled down on Republican President George W. Bush’s educational agenda of holding schools accountable for students’ test scores. Under the administration’s $3 billion School Improvement Grant program, for example, struggling schools had options to implement new accountability systems for teachers, remove staff, be closed or converted into charter schools, the vast majority of which employ non-unionized staff.
These policies devastated some local teachers unions, including Philadelphia’s, which lost 10,000 members during the Obama and Bush administrations. Weingarten expects Clinton to totally upend this agenda, and hopes she won’t reappoint Education Secretary John King, who was just confirmed by the senate in March.
From the day he was elected, President Obama decided to maintain the punitive policies of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind and made standardized testing even more consequential. He and his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan pressed for higher standards, tougher accountability, and more choices, especially charter schools. They used Race to the Top to promote the evaluation of teachers by their students’ test scores, a policy that cost hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of dollars, with nothing to show for it.
Let’s all hope that Hillary Clinton, if elected, will recognize the damage done by the Bush-Obama education agenda and push the “reset” button for a federal policy that helps children, educators, and public schools.
Weingarten is and remains the enemy of working teachers. There is no possible way she could ever detach herself from her positions, policies, alliances, and statements over the past many years. Simply, she is the personification of everything that is detestable.
In Philadelphia, members of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers have been without a contract for four years. They have had no wage increase, no step increases for years of service or acquiring further degrees. At the Democratic Convention last month, Randi did not mention this during the three minutes see was given at the convention. On a panel a few days later, a Philadelphia reporter asked her about this and she did not respond.
In reading and learning more about how politics, think tanks, and government work, with all the money Obama took it’s no wonder he acted the way he did. I’m supporting getting money out of elections.
A significant component of the problem is what they call, DC influence peddling firms. The firms make money, when vested interests want to be heard by decision-makers. Squared Communications, (the former DNC CEO landed there last week), describes itself as, making “communication effectively heard by the right audience”, e.g. media, politicians, their staffs, etc. The firms straddle both parties. The Podesto Group (John Podesto is Hillary’s campaign manager) has a CEO, who is described, at the site, as a veteran Republican political operative and deputy campaign manager for Jeb Bush (an ed. privatizer). The Group considers the following as “wins”, “using media relations to change a federal agency’s course and, developing creative funding strategies to secure federal dollars”. Madelyn Albright’s firm, Albright Stonebridge reportedly has as a client Paul Singer, a charter school zealot.
Public education, as an entity, lacks money and an authority structure to buy contracts with firms, who promise and can deliver access.
So, addressing campaign financing is a substantial part of the problem, but not, the only part.
Thanks LInda for the DC influence peddling firms information. As teachers we’re all about the facts of the matter and the powers that be make up their own reality to meet their “needs”. We’re not in Kansas any more and have a very different sort of game to play to get our message out, have it understood, and how people act on it.
Linda, Interestingly enough, in this election cycle the push poll seems to be the latest form of political advertising or I have been polled a dozen times. Progress is having one of the questions being how do you feel about your Public Schools. Another question was on the Opt out movement. Hundreds of thousands of opt outs has a way of making politicians nervous.
I wish I’d get that call in Ohio. I rec’d a mass e-mail survey from Clinton’s top aid, Huma Abedin- not one question about education except the TPM about college debt.
I expect her to be an Ed dingbat and corporatist like Obama, despite her book, It Takes a Village.
I think both Obama and Clinton have good intentions in this area, but they are what they are.
Maybe you can teach her something she can use to get past her own machine, Diane.
Trump’s polls are sliding.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2016/08/08/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-cnn-poll-of-polls/index.html?client=safari
“Maybe you can teach her something she can use to get past her own machine. . . ”
A wish or hope and $1.75 will get you a bottle of beer around here.
I think I’ll stick with the beer.
If Hillary’s own machine includes
the former DNC CEO, the Clinton campaign manager and
Madelyn Albright, they’re all raking in money in what is described as the influence peddling business which straddles both political parties.
One is on the record asking for wealthy people to donate
to ed reform politicians and another, reportedly has Paul Singer as a client.
Well, I don’t think anyone in their right mind can follow in the path Duncan and King and keep a settled conscience.
In their left brain???
Despite all the discussion of support for public education, both Randi and Hillary are still trying to sell the common core, and Hillary has mentioned accountability, which, as we know, is standardized testing. Both of these women have much work to do if they expect the rank and file union members to trust them.
While the DNC platform reflects a more progressive tone for public education, most of these positions were leveraged by Bernie delegates, not Hillary’s. We should also know that platform represent an ideal, and there is no obligation to follow them. We can expect Hillary to continue to skirt the issue of public education for fear of alienating big donors. With good reason, most teachers remain skeptical of any significant policy changes.
Ms. Weingarten may want the job, but I suspect Ms. Clinton would retain John King.
King has to go!
I am trapped in Weingarten’s “historic contract” in Newark. I await the day that Weingarten takes action to benefit public school students and teachers instead of advancing her own private agenda. I hold no faith in the fantasy of holding corporatist Clinton’s feet to the fire to implement a progressive agenda. Clinton appeased Sanders’ supporters to the degree necessary and now she is free to return to satisfying her billionaire campaign donors.
Any suggestions for who she should name as Secretary of Ed? It would be great to have some names to give the administration and say if you support teachers, appoint one of these people.
Diane!
The Network for Public Education (Diane is part of it and Carol Burris is the director) did a poll. You should all go to the website and submit your ideas. After reading one of the posts here today about Vermont, I want to put Stephan Morse, Chair of the Vermont Board of Education, at the top of my list!
But I think Hillary will keep John King. She is no better than Obama.
I certainly hope that Hillary does not reappoint John King. That would be a huge disappointment. Who would Trump appoint? Dr. Ben Carson? Scott Walker? John White? Tony Bennett?
Trump may appoint a hologram of Frank Sinatra singing his greatest hits.
I finally saw Trump in person yesterday — No, wait, it was actually an orangutan slinging its business at the crowd. But it was definitely Vladimir Putin himself I saw behind a rock giving the ape a thumbs up and yelling ‘Genius!’ periodically.
Why on earth would a working teacher take anything this woman says seriously?
Weingarten is an “asset” for so-called education reform who has taken pride in “collaboration” with it.
Does that sound harsh and unfair? Well, the quoted words are not mine: the former is The Broad Foundation’s description of her in one of its annual reports, while the latter is her own description of what she did as UFT leader while Michael Bloomberg was doing his utmost to destroy public education in NYC.
hear, hear
YEP!
And let’s not forget that Michael Bloomberg was a speaker at the Democratic National Convention and Randi attended as one of Hillary’s Superdelegates.
In December 2015, the AFT and the NEA signed on to an agenda for teacher pay-for-performance and a management system first conjured in 2010 by McKinsey &Co., pushed by the Obama administration as the RESPECT program (Recognizing Educational Success, Professional Excellence, and Collaborative Teaching), and more recently reworked, with the help of the Center for American Progress and Peter Hart spin doctors, as the Teach Strong initiative.
The management system assumes that a “master teacher,” a person who teaches one class and produces “more than a year’s worth of gain in test scores, year after year” will be equally effective it put in charge of 400 students, and a couple of teachers not yet at the level of a master, and some novice teachers and paraprofessionals (to help deliver digital/online instruction). The “master teacher” is responsible for the performance and professional development of this “instructional delivery team” and with the approval of a principal can recomend people for hiring and firing.
This is a corporate management, training, and pay-for- performance scheme. It is free of any evidence to support the scheme. It is also marketed as the best way to close the achievement gap, especially if you do two things on the front end of the “teaching pipeline.”
The first is only admit candidates into teaching who have scored in the top 25% in the nation on SAT, ACT, or grade point averages in the best (elite) university undergraduate programs. The second (contradictory) idea is to let anyone with some “promise” as a teacher to enter as a learn-on-the job novice working under a master teacher.
The 40 endorsers of the Teach Strong agenda have not read the nine principles they have agreed to. Why? All nine of the principles have not been published. What these organizations endorsed was a marketing report called “Smart, Skilled, and Striving: Transforming and Elevating the Teaching Profession” published by the Center for American Progress with ten reforms (not nine principles). This “Smart, Skilled, Striving” promotional paper has not an ounce of research to support the claims or the managerial scheme it forwards. Above all else it is a carefully crafted messaging campaign. In fact, the Peter Hart PR firm organized several focus groups to test the key words in this messaging campaign–“respect,” “modernize,” and “elevate” are repeated over and over in “Smart, Skilled, Striving” and in Teach Strong’s effort to ensure a “shift toward a respected, modernized, and elevated teacher workforce.”
Teachers and other who have been following policies in teacher education should know that the following organizations, really odd bedfellows, are determined to
undermine university-based teacher education,
give legitimacy to on-the-job-training for teachers,
eliminate collective bargaining and teacher voice in their work with students,
reduce the process of education to producing gains in scores on standardized tests.
Among the odd bedfellows who are willing to engage in this dumbing down and de-personalization of the work of teachers are the phony Relay Graduate School of Education and the once credible American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.
Teach For America has signed on to this agenda along with the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association.
The totally absurd National Council on Teacher Quality (ratings of teacher prep programs with no credibility) has signed on, along with the once reputable National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.
All of the pushers of the Common Core are on board: America Achieves, Council of Chief State School Officers, The Education Trust, National Commission on Teaching & America’s Future.
Altogether, 40 organizations have been enticed to buy into a pig in a poke. The process of marketing this management scheme is similar to that used in launching the Common Core–a campaign with marketing and endorsements up front, well before the full array of standards were published.
Teach Strong principles are being rolled out one by one. There are nine. The principles are designed to maximize the appearance of efficiency in labor-force management.
They are well suited for thinking about education as nothing more than a service delivery system with the structure of a retail franchise. http://teachstrong.org/principle-1-2/
Again another excellent comment, Laura. Thanks!
“The first is only admit candidates into teaching who have scored in the top 25% in the nation on SAT, ACT, or grade point averages in the best (elite) university undergraduate programs. The second (contradictory) idea is to let anyone with some “promise” as a teacher to enter as a learn-on-the job novice working under a master teacher.
Just who among this group is rushing to sign up? Those displaced by HB1 visa holders?
How much money does it take to influence Hillary Clinton when it comes to decisions like her support for public educaiton and children?
Discover where the money comes from before making a decision. HRC has raised almost 600 million dollars between 1999 – 2016. According to the LA Times, Eli Broad gave $100,000 to Bill Clinton’s presidential reelection camping and has donated $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation.
http://laschoolreport.com/broads-support-of-clinton-raising-concerns-within-teacher-unions/
How much influence does $200 thousand dollars have in the $600 million Clinton fund raising machine? Take into account that according to Open Secrets only 1 percent of the $600 million came from Super PACs.
https://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cycle=Career&cid=N00000019&type=I
Wait. I thought ESSA was the next best thing. What happened?
John King happened.
“Let’s hope that” “progressive” Sen. Sherrod Brown has an attack of intelligence or scruples, recognizes that charter schools rake in money from taxpayers to enrich Wall Street (charter school debt gives 10-18% to the financial sector), that they prevent local control by citizens, that they are a costly and failed duplication of services and, that the claims of competition and improvement are bogus.
If wishes were fishes….
Like!!
The “problem of Randi Weingarten” is actually stand-in for the broader problem we as unionized teachers face: the lack of any strong, militant creative union leadership and the inability for the rank and file to muster up any real change at the top.
Just today I read this article on Jacobin that is perhaps the best investigation/explanation into the heart of this broad issue. I encourage everyone to read it and think about it…..maybe even pass it on to your building union leadership (if you are teachers).
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/08/the-forgotten-militants/
The article is focused on industrial labor unions for the most part, but it’s relevance to us is quite clear.
This quote says a lot, and we need to start thinking about this stuff in real ways:
“Faced with falling returns and unprecedented challenges to their postwar global dominance, US capitalists went on the offensive. They began to demand concessions in 1979. The AFL-CIO leadership, prisoners of their strategic alliance with the NLRB and the Democrats, responded by agreeing to givebacks and attempting to convince employers that they were potential “partners” who could make US corporations more profitable and competitive.
Conciliation was a disaster. Organized labor declined across the United States, and wages, benefits, and working conditions deteriorated throughout the economy.”
This is also telling:
“But what explains the lack of struggles from below? Why haven’t the labor rank-and-file repelled the employer offensive with more gusto?
In short: the dwindling size and political disorganization of the “militant minority.” Without a layer of workers with a vision and strategy for how to organize, fight, and win, labor officials have been free to pursue their near-suicidal approach.”
Anyway…..good article and refreshingly absent of any Ed talk!
Let me say this about that!
In 1990 when I returned to teaching in NYC, writing the curriculum supplying everything, for the entire seven grade, and putting that school on the map with the 3rd highest scores in the city on the ELA writing tests when 3/4 of NYC failed,, I was under attack from my second year. With the Common Core waiting in the wings, and my salary about to go to longevity (I was only making 58k) I had to be sent packing… only I didn’t know this!
Randi was president when the Manhattan Bureau rep, Ivan Tiger did his thing, allowing the city to end the tenure of the top teachers. They came after me in 1998, when I was celebrated because Harvard and Pew had chosen me as cohort for the National Standards research in NY.
They could’nt touch me when I was the cohort, but when the next year came along, and even though was the NY State English Council’s “educator of Excellence,’ they ‘trumped’ up charges OF CORPORAL PUNISHMENT, sent me to a rubber room, and tried to end my career finally charging me with INCOMPETENCE!.LOL
. I hired an attorney because not a single grievance that I filed according to my CONTRACT, was ever acted upon, and in fact Sir Ivan made a mockery of the only meeting I had.
My HUSBAND finally got through to Randi herself, who ‘rescued me’, knowing full well who I was. She arranged ‘arbitration,’ and I was ‘allowed’ to retire. Even though, had i remained my socials security, my pension and my savings would have been so much better than the pittance i receive for my service.
THAT, was Randi’s union… so pardon my amusement that she will do anything.
She may be a nice person, and she may mean well, and talk a good game, but she is just another politician who does nothing to end the corruption that did this to NYC
She doesn’t mean well. There is nothing good to say about her. Nothing. Even her intentions are those of a fumbling, amateur-hour, awe-struck, wanna-be political climber.
She’s awful.
Imagine the sort of overall good it would do for morale and overall culture within teachers unions nationwide if she left!!!!
She is our Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.
A healthy exfoliation is always good.
This is certainly the problem in Los Angeles. I worried about the lack of outreach and membership building within UTLA in the eighties. This was when Reaganomics was influencing young people and those coming into the profession. Now we see the result.
In short: the dwindling size and political disorganization of the “militant minority.” Without a layer of workers with a vision and strategy for how to organize, fight, and win, labor officials have been free to pursue their near-suicidal approach.”
This passage should have preceded my reply.
I do not disagree with the premises. But let’s put a few historical facts in perspective.
One: Taft Hartley 1948, crippled the Union movement, It took decades for it to become effective . “Right To Work” coupled with the outlawing of secondary strikes and boycotts,ensured a non Union South. It took thirty years for major industries to move there, ie textiles. The threat was as real as the threat to leave the country today.
One .5 : Landrum–Griffin Act , enabled racketeering charges to be leveled against union leaders for acts that may have been criminal but were in the interest of their members . A brick through a window or a police horse punched in the nose (you might remember that one in NY) could result in the bankrupting of the Union and a Federal prison term for its leaders. Do not think for a minute that our private sector labor history has been one of kisses and hugs. What you might consider peaceful disobedience against a third party enabling union busting, can bankrupt a union. ( standing on line to make a purchase than just walking out.)
Two : The reversal of those crippling features was prevented by a filler-buster on behalf of Business RoundTable during the Carter administration. The vote was the first major victory for the most powerful lobby in the country ,the BRT formed to bust unions.
Three : There was a little event in August of 1981 that sent chills through the labor movement. PATCO ring any bells.
Four: That was followed shortly by the Caterpillar Strike/Lock out with similar result . The UAW defeated at Caterpillar. It was only months after Obama’s inauguration that labor knew he was no friend. A total betrayal when he visited the Caterpillar plant that broke the UAW. to announce the Stimulus plan . (Bitburg redux )
Five : In New York we have the Taylor law which adds a layer of difficulty. With fines for the Union, the members and jail time for leaders.
So yes Union leaders formed Joint Industry Boards and tried to work with employers rather than confront . Sought to work with politicians to ensure that their mutual constituencies were serve. Trade agreements in the 90s were not designed to lower the already low tariffs. They were designed to legally protect the interests of American corporations who relocated their production and supply chains overseas. So if the threat of moving to the South wasn’t enough . You just sit there and shut up or I’ll move your job to China. They did that anyway, at their own pace
I am all for a militant union movement that brings the oligarchy down.
Wake me when we get there. When you(workers) are willing to sacrifice your job, freedom and possibly life we will get there.
Those CWA/IBEW members that took on Verizon were brave and successful. It did not have to end the way it did . Perhaps if it wasn’t in the middle of a Presidential campaign it would not have .
If you think I am a little over the top . Nothing came easy in the labor movement . It was not all that long ago. We have some( a very very few) alive that might still remember. I am afraid we will not reverse the slide till enough Americans have had enough. We do not teach Labor History in our schools . Ask a HS or college graduate about Blair Mountain and he thinks of witches.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/theminewars/
Speaking of failed leadership…found this link in my notes. http://perdidostreetschool.blogspot.com/2013/07/its-time-to-fire-bad-union-leaders-like.html?spref=bl
How can we get rid of her???
Susan, I am so sorry to hear your story. Terrible! And, I’m sure, more common than laypeople think. “We can’t get rid of those old, incompetent teachers because they have tenure!
This letter describes the vital shift that must happen for the futures of our children and the survival of Public Education, the cornerstone of our Democracy. Our collective voices, actions and commitment to our children, our students and their futures have made a difference. The tide is turning. Now, let’s work together to make sure Hillary Clinton gets the message. As much as I respect and admire President Obama ( I drove my son to his first inauguration),he never understood, he didn’t pay attention. He passed Public Education off to the “eduprenuers…” with dire consequences. Someday, somehow, this will be one of the huge regrets Barack Obama will have to come to grips with, the dark shadow cast over his legacy as President of the United States.
He never was who we thought he was, on many issues, for a multitude of reasons. The perfect reason for not having Term limits. I would like to have a twenty year history , a legislative record to judge who to vote for, when voting for the highest office in the land.
Thanks Maureen, for the work you are doing in Ohio.
Agree with you about Pres. Obama’s legacy- destruction of the most important common good.
I disagree with you about Obama. I think he came to office with the notions he followed. These ideas were quite active in the late sixties when teacher unions were seen as an obstruction to young black students. For many historical and societal reasons, trust was an issue between parents and teachers, at least in some neighborhoods of NYC.
Yes but was that his personal experience? No. Private schooling and way after the Sixties. Just not who we thought he was.
Not the hedge fund and Silicon Valley money?
Maybe Randi can speak to the education “reform” crowd the next time she hobnobs with them. Remember this is the woman who chastised teachers for walking out of a Bill Gates speech.
“…a seat at the table” — no compromise there!
“Randi Weingarten expresses her belief that Hillary Clinton will change course from the Obama education policies. She expects that a President Clinton would select a new Secretary of Education who ‘shares her expressed belief in strengthening public schools & supporting teachers.'” Really? & just when did HRC express those beliefs, or have I missed something here? (Perhaps I have, as, after a point, I stopped watching CNN & MSNBC.)
Again (&–I repeat)–I am astounded by the silence of Arkansas teachers who have NOT commented here with regard to HRC attacks on them (they had to call in NEA leadership to defend them) while Bill was governor (as documented in Carl Bernstein’s terrific book (& it is fair to HRC–an example of good & ethical journalism–both the positive & the negative}–his 2007 tome, A Woman in Charge.) Did any of you read it (I’ve commented on it here many times, & it’s a must-read) ?
So–is that new Sec. of Ed. named Randi Weingarten?!
I vote for Rebecca Holcombe. (see an earlier post RE: Vermont’s rejection of John King’s agenda–Rebecca Holcombe is Vermont’s Education Secretary).
Yeah, like that’ll happen.
Sorry, that Vermont post follows this one–not an earlier post, although there are some about her/Vermont in some archived posts.
So how long did Randi’s nose grow during this interview?? She has supported every single Reform and was silent over the nomination of John King. And she supported the changes in our NYC contract by Bloomberg and Joel Klein. Big supporter of VAM as well. Made deals with Green Dot charters and had Bill Gates as a guest speaker. The list goes on and on, and she never opened her mouth to support rank and file. When she did, it was doubletalk.
I’ve worked in New York City schools for 13 years, several of them while Randi Weingarten led the UFT. I don’t think she had done much for educators or their profession.
Therefore, I have to join the skeptics; I believe Ms. Weingarten is out of touch, and doesn’t really care about working teachers. On principle, I would oppose her–especially given the abundance of more qualified candidates–as Secretary of Education.
This is a very important issue. The NYT article (and the Alternet article about Zillow) are going to be, I should think, consequential. Influential. I suspect that 2017 will usher change in education reform. From what we know of corporate modus operandi, there will be a huge rebranding. They will change the name.
I really need to be more careful about commenting after stepping away from the screen for a few minutes. I click the wrong buttons. I meant to comment on the NYTimes post. Sigh. I will copy and paste.
Thanks for the info., LCT. That’s it–“rebranding…They will change the name.” That’s what “they’ve” always done. Oh, yeah–works in business.
“You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”
Really–NCLB~RTT; charters~public charters; ISATs (IL State Achievement Tests & whatever else those Pear$on “standardized” te$t$ were called in your state)~PARCCs; Duncan~King; Obama~Hillary.
“We WON’T BE FOOLED AGAIN!”
There’s no excuse for the failure of union leadership, evidenced by the ease with which anti-public education candidates are elected to state board of education positions. There’s no excuse for other industrial and public sector union members, to be in the dark (like many of the AFT and NEA members), about the national war against the schools, that they pay for and, which their kids attend.