Labor & Employment Law

So-Called Education Manifesto More Rhetoric Than Solution

By Mike Hall

Last week, a group of big city school superintendents offered a so-called ?manifesto? to fix the nation?s schools. AFT President Randi Weingarten says that although the manifesto?s goals are lofty, it offers few concrete solutions.

The manifesto, wrote Valerie Strauss, a Washington Post education reporter,

was long on rhetoric and short on substance?views charter schools as a big answer to urban school failure, bashes teachers unions and supports market-driven ?fixes? to schools.

Weingarten says the manifesto?s only specific remedy to fix ailing school, ?shifting sole responsibility to teachers? and offers a different approach.

Let’s come together?teachers, superintendents, principals, parents and community members–and develop a joint manifesto about how to best educate all of our kids. After all, superintendents have a responsibility not only to demand excellence and accountability from others, but also to ensure that teachers have the resources to help their students succeed.

She calls for more collaboration among teachers, superintendents, school districts and elected officials to share strategies that work for teacher development, mentoring and evaluation practices and achievement gains.

In the area of teacher development, Weingarten says AFT has worked with experts and educators to create a

framework for teacher development and evaluation that is being implemented in more than 50 school districts. Its purpose is to enable new and struggling teachers to improve, to help good teachers become great ones and to identify those who should not be in the profession.

While high achievement standards for students are important, such standards are ?meaningless without training and assessments aligned to them and, crucially, without time for teachers to prepare for them and for students to achieve them.?

Public schools, writes Weingarten have an obligation to help all children learn, ?regardless of parental engagement, native language or family income.?

As Jonathan P. Raymond, the superintendent of the Sacramento public schools wrote recently: “We have to stop blaming teachers for problems that have multiple causes, ranging from poor administrative oversight and accountability to a lack of parent engagement.

In a related development, one superintendent whose name appeared on the document?Arlene Ackerman of Philadelphia?says the final manifesto published in the Washington Post was far different from what she originally saw and that the final document is far removed from ?my core principles.?

Ackerman says fixing schools is not a matter of waiting for some super hero or celebrity educator to come swooping in with a book bag full of answers and she warns:

Be careful in this time of polarity not to get caught up in the scripted political agendas of individuals or organizations who seek to divide rather than bring us together. A collaborative approach to reform may not be easy, glamorous or movie-worthy, but it is a stronger and sustainable solution that is likely to outlast the tenure of individuals or politicized agendas.

Click here to read Weingarten?s full column and here for Ackerman?s.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on October 18, 2010 (boomark / email).