Labor & Employment Law

AFT President Proposes New Path Forward in Education

By James Parks

AFT President Randi Weingarten today proposed a “new path forward” in building quality schools in our changing world.

Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., this morning, Weingarten said if America is going to thrive in the 21st century, our entire approach to education must change. She proposed specific changes in the way teachers are evaluated, disciplined and how they are allowed to do their jobs:

• Creating a fair, transparent and expedient process to evaluate teachers. States should adopt standards for what teachers should know and be able to do; teachers should be assessed through multiple measures, including student test scores that gauge individual academic progress; administrators should be held accountable for putting the standards into motion; and teachers should receive help through mentoring and professional development.

• Developing new procedures for handling allegations of teacher misconduct. She announced AFT has asked Kenneth Feinberg, special master for executive compensation for the Troubled Assets Relief Program, to help the union develop new protocols for teacher discipline.
• Ensuring teachers have the time and tools to do their jobs effectively, including establishing common academic standards. Also, she said, teachers need time to come together to resolve student issues, share lesson plans and share successes and failures.
• Creating a trusting, collaborative relationship between management and teachers. She proposed creating labor and management forums for educators similar to the federal forums created by President Obama to improve the delivery of federal services.

“If we can work together,” Weingarten said:

we can create a path to a stronger public education system that is defined by excellence, fairness, shared responsibility and mutual trust.

Read Weingarten’s entire speech here. Learn more about AFT’s efforts to improve our nation’s public schools here.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on January 12, 2010 (boomark / email).