Education bloggers read DU Education Group.
From @ the chalk face:
It’s something I could never do: talk out of multiple sides of my mouth. I try not to have it many ways, but one, the way I know and feel is right. Granted, we all do things that run counter or contrary to that of our employers. We seek a balance. Many of us do that quite well.
The president of the AFT does it best. Her connections to the power players, the profiteers in education reform, are numerous.
Now, we are seeing connections to the roundly criticized firm inBloom. Are the members of the national AFT aware of this? How is this conflict of interest not entirely inappropriate? Well, it is, but it does not seem anyone cares, least of all Ms. Weingarten...
http://atthechalkface.com/2013/05/25/rweingarten-fantastic-at-one-key-thing-triangulation-aft/underlined part links to this:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/11245970
and speaking of randi, there was an interesting exchange about her supposed teaching experience:
AnonymousMay 25, 2013 at 6:25 PM
Ive heard her repeatedly lie to large groups of teachers about how she "was in the trenches for 7 years"- completely false.
Reply
I noticed that...May 25, 2013 at 10:26 PM
Randi was in the trenches for one period a day with the best students; I think AP students at Bard HS Early College. This is a school where the principal and the majority of the teachers have a PhD and the students are highly motivated.
Leo Casey was a teacher there fore many, many years.
My understanding was that she taught that one class a day, not a large class, for 6 years. Leo Casey was her mentor, showing her how to write lessons, the technique of presenting the lessons, and asking questions that assesses the students' understanding of the lesson.
How can she call herself a "teacher in the trenches" when teaching one class a day does not make you an experienced teacher? What about those teachers who teach 5 periods a day, for 180 instructional days a year, for over 20 years? Those are teachers in the trenches! She was a politician and union hack in the making using the classroom and those students as stepping stones. Wait a minute. This sounds exactly what TFA does to our students.
It is time for someone to FOIL her year-end evaluation rating sheet and find out the amount of time she spent in the classroom.
Randi managed to escape the full-time teaching load through politics and she uses the word "trenches" so as to belong with the teaching force. I say throw her in a trench and cover her up with dirt. She and her entourage of deformers have destroyed the teaching profession.
http://perdidostreetschool.blogspot.com/2013/05/weingarten-talks-out-of-both-sides-of.html
weingarten started as a lawyer for the then-president of UFT. she wasn't a teacher. it seems pretty clear that she was selected for her position as 'union leader' by the power structure of uft/aft (which is reportedly structured so that outsider candidates have no chance at holding office).
years ago i was on a leftist list serve with a bunch of nyc lefties; leo casey was also on it. i didn't know anything about insider lefty politics at the time (still don't), but still managed to understand that many of the posters thought casey was a phoney and a mole.