Yesterday Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers, gave a speech calling the process to remove teachers “glacial” and reiterating that student test scores should be a part of teacher evaluations. How did the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teacher’s union respond? Jay Matthews has it:
[The NEA's director of teacher quality] said [...]
All Posts Tagged: 'AFT'
Fun With Words
Over-Mentored?
I went to an event at AEI yesterday about the effect mentoring has had on the success of new teachers. Jonah Rockoff, economics and finance professor at Columbia, presented his findings on an evaluation of the $40 million NYC mentoring program. You can read more about Rockoff’s results here. Rockoff found slight increases in reading [...]
Union Busting
AFTie Ed flags this story from Illinois, where it appears that when teachers in a newly-opened charter school attempted to unionize, the school responded with various heavy-handed and probably illegal tactics including loyalty oaths, etc. In my mind, if a charter school opens its doors, the teachers are happy working there without being represented by [...]
Winerip on Poverty, Etc.
Micheal Winerip covers a new ETS report in the Times today, exploring the relationship between out-of-school factors like single parenthood, TV watching, reading at home, etc. and student achievement. The report–which I have no quarrel with, Education Sector co-director Andy Rotherham was a reviewer–finds, to the surprise of no one, that these things make a [...]
Another Take on NAEP
As Kevin notes, the spin around the new NAEP results is really quite something. The statements about the scores (which show moderate, but not earth-shattering improvements) range from mildly over/under enthusiastic to wildly celebratory or wholly dismissive.
Senator Kennedy managed to use the occasion to condemn spending on the Iraq war, while President Bush went [...]
Comparability, Continued
AFTies Ed and Michele return from summer vacation and weigh in with a pair of thoughtful posts (here and here) on the “comparability” debate. They’re right in saying that forced transfers aren’t an ideal–or in many cases, even practical–solution to the teacher distribution problem, and that we ought to focus on creating schools for low-income [...]
You’re Fired (Not!)
This post by AFTie Ed last week was laugh-out-loud funny but also made a point well worth remembering:
Wait, you mean you can’t just snap your hand and get rid of non union employees you don’t like? Wow!
There are lots of reasons lousy and downright horrid people often don’t get fired, and most of those reasons [...]
AFT: He Who is Not the Enemy of My Enemy is My Enemy, Or Something.
AFTie Ed faults Education Sector’s new Connecting the Dots about the Walton Family Foundation’s support of the charter school movement for not being what it isn’t–a report about Wal-Mart’s anti-union activities. Why? Because, says Ed:
Wal-Mart attacks unions and those workers who want to form one. There is no reason to see their support for charter [...]
Lowering Student Loan Default Rates: What One Consortium of Historically Black Institutions Did to Succeed 
College and Career-Ready: Using Outcomes Data to Hold High Schools Accountable for Student Success
03/19/10 | Ben Miller is quoted on college graduation rates and the NCAA Tournament in the Detroit Free Press.
03/19/10 | Linda Perlstein links to Education Sector's "College- and Career-Ready" event.
03/17/10 | Ben Miller's column on graduation rates and NCAA Tournament eligibility is mentioned on The Wall Street Journal's The Daily Fix.
03/17/10 | Kevin Carey's critique of Diane Ravitch's latest book is quoted in Doublethink's Conventional Folly blog.
03/15/10 | Ben Miller pens an op-ed for US News & World Report on using graduation rates to determine NCAA Tournament eligibility.