Randi Weingarten Quotes
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Education - much like law or medicine - should be a profession governed by professionals. Unfortunately, too many policies, even those that are well-intentioned, come from the top, leaving out those closest to the classroom, who have the greatest insight into how to provide a high-quality education for all students.
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All working parents should have paid family leave. That's one of many reasons I'm working to elect Hillary Clinton. She has a plan to guarantee workers - men and women - up to 12 weeks of paid family leave to care for a new child or a seriously ill family member.
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Merit pay has failed repeatedly, and it's no surprise. When you base teacher pay on standardized test scores, you won't improve education; you just promote the high-stakes testing craze that's led parents, students and educators to shout 'Enough!' all across the country.
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Good tests can help teachers determine how their students are performing and identify the areas in which their students need assistance. Like an X-ray, however, tests can diagnose, but they cannot cure.
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When student performance shows increases on test scores, that improvement is not associated with an increase in 'fluid intelligence' - that is, using logical thinking and problem solving in novel situations, rather than recalling previously learned facts and skills.
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Learning should be engaging. Testing should not be the be all and end all. All students should have a broad curriculum that includes the arts and enrichment. Students should have opportunities to work in teams and engage in project-based learning. And student and family well-being should be front and center.
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Kids need time for problem solving, critical thinking, applying knowledge through project-based instruction, working in teams, falling down and getting right back up to figure out what they didn't understand and why.
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Appropriate assessments are a crucial part of effectively educating students. But they only measure a narrow segment of what kids need to learn.
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As a woman, as a Jew, as a lesbian, as a labor leader in a time of great anti-union animus, I know that other people project their biases on me. But it is nothing like the experience of our African-American brothers and sisters, especially black and brown men and boys.
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Teachers need time to engage with colleagues - whether shadowing, mentoring, co-teaching or conferring. They need a voice in school decisions and to be trusted as professionals.
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Standardized testing is at cross purposes with many of the most important purposes of public education. It doesn't measure big-picture learning, critical thinking, perseverance, problem solving, creativity or curiosity, yet those are the qualities great teaching brings out in a student.
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If we want to recruit and retain high-quality teachers, it starts with a fair wage, adequate working conditions, and the resources and support to succeed. Remember: teachers' working conditions are students' learning conditions.
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High-quality alternative educational settings should be available when students violate codes of conduct and need to be removed from the classroom while still maintaining access to instruction. And there must be social, health and psychological services to address students' needs.
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The presumption of innocence, the benefit of the doubt, walking without worrying - these should not be hallmarks of white privilege. They are human rights - human rights - that should be enjoyed by all.
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We have guidance counselors that have caseloads of 500 to 600 children. We don't have enough to help the children.
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I loved teaching social studies. And I loved starting each year by teaching about John Locke and the social contract. That lesson helped me teach not just about our rules for the classroom, but how, in our democracy, we give up some individual rights to ensure we collectively have the right to live and prosper in a society.
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I'm such a stereotypical female learner in that I love social studies and love literature, and I always struggled with math and science.
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Real parent engagement means establishing meaningful ways for parents to be partners in their children's public education from the beginning - not just when a school is failing. The goal should be to never let a school get to that point.
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You can't be against bullying without actually doing something about it.
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Rather than support workers at home or investments in public schools, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan support the Bush-era tax cuts for the very wealthy. They want to hand over our schools to private corporations.
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Sure, just like there are bad lawyers, bad doctors and bad politicians, there are people who aren't cut out to be teachers. But by and large, the people who are called to be teachers are passionate about the profession.
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The last thing we need is efforts by some politicians and the NRA to arm educators and allow more guns in our schools.
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America always pivots between collective responsibility and the idea that the individual can pull himself up by his bootstraps.
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There is a recognition that Second Amendment rights, like First Amendment and other rights, come with responsibilities and limitations. There is no reason both sides of the gun debate can't support policies that both protect the right to legally own guns for sport and safety, and reduce the likelihood of mass fatalities.