New (MASS.) Teachers Union Chief is Unapologetically Adversarial

[Smarmie Doofus]

Now compare *this* with the embarrassing leadership we have at AFT, NEA and UFT. Why the staggering disconnect?

I know $$$ is a factor, but is it *just* money? Is it that she just can't be bought?

I'm scratching my head but thrilled that she's taking charge.


>>>>NORTHAMPTON — Don’t make the mistake of talking about “teacher training” to Barbara Madeloni.

“Oh, please don’t use the word training,” she chided a reporter. “We educate teachers. We don’t train them. We train dogs. And I love dogs.”


Beacon Hill better get used to that sharply pointed, confrontational style.


A self-described social justice activist from the liberal college town of Northampton, Madeloni was until recently a complete unknown in political circles. But her upset election last month as president of the 110,000-member Massachusetts Teachers Association has already jolted lawmakers and officials worried about the dawn of a more adversarial relationship with the state’s largest union.

The 57-year-old former psychologist turned teacher won her race by openly criticizing the current union president, Paul Toner, for his record of negotiating with — rather than fighting — officials on the development of teacher assessments and the Common Core, a set of national education standards adopted in Massachusetts and 43 other states.

Her agenda forcefully rejects those policies, which have gained increasing support from Republicans and Democratsover the last 20 years. She supports a three-year moratorium on standardized testing and teacher assessments and denounces charter schools. Though these initiatives have never been popular with teachers unions, the Massachusetts Teachers Association, under Toner, took a softer line, seeking compromise rather than confrontation.

That seems highly unlikely when Madeloni takes office July 15 for a two-year term. She says teacher assessments and testing are part of the “general assault on public education by people who are looking to privatize it, to profit off the public dollar, and to bust our unions.”


She has a flare for firebrand rhetoric. She recently told Commonwealth Magazine that she wants to wrest the education debate away

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2014/06/05/massachusetts-teachers-association-new-president-rejects-assessments-testing-and-other-education-policies/N4LWsYjMXyc3ON98pxnPJP/story.html

[Squinch]

1. She's not saying anything but the truth. That's not firebrand rhetoric.

[mbperrin]

2. Good Lord! A REAL advocate for education!

Can I have one here in Texas, please? Huh? Please?

[Igel]

4. A real advocate for teachers.

Let's not confuse "teacher" with "education."

It's rather like confusing a rancher with BBQ.

A year ago I was firmly against standardized testing. Then a series of standardized tests were dropped in my state. I think that the standardized tests were too hard for regulars. The only way that a lot of kids passed them was targeted tutoring and teaching. There's a reason most such tests have low pass rates the first year they're given, and the pass rate increases for the next few years as teachers adapt to teaching mostly what's tested.

They distort the system of education. Granted, they're just one distorting political factor and there are others, but high-stakes tests are a biggy. (So's political correctness.) Then again, the entire field of education is a disaster, one so riddled with bad assumptions and horrendously screwed-up research that if it were duplicated in any field that had immediately realized outcomes (say, bridge-building) it would be shut down and started again from scratch.

But without the standardized tests a lot of teachers I know stopped working. "I'm all about what's easy for me." "Nobody cares if I give out the test as the review, and go over the review in class right before the test." "They don't learn anything anyway--why should I bust my butt worrying about them? When was the last time you actually used any high-school science in daily life?" "Why fight with them to get them to learn? Just keep them occupied with fun projects and film-Friday." One time recently that teacher simply didn't give a unit test. Her kids hadn't done that 2-week unit. His science class did personal finance, watched Frozen for a couple of days, talked about college plans, etc. The teacher didn't understand the content, so didn't teach it. And you know what? Nobody in the administration cared one way or the other because there was no standardized test covering that class.

This is a kind of rot. One teacher slacks off and gets by with it, another teacher realizes busting his butt is pointless and also slacks off. Eventually Johnny can't read. Or thinks that vaccines cause autism, carbon dioxide is healthy and doesn't cause global warming, GMO foods are evil, or wild horses are natural and indigenous to the American West and should be protected.

[mbperrin]

5. I've been teaching for 19 years at a large urban high school here in west Texas, and I have

never met any teacher with an attitude as you have described.

Standardized testing defines what will be taught and nothing else, because district money, administrative pay, teacher pay, facilities money, all revolve around those sacred results.

Now this is all strange, since no longitudinal study has ever followed a group of students from birth to death to find out what contributed most to happiness in their lives, and that's the only reason for living - happiness.

Students still come to the USA from all over the world to attend school here, because the simple fact is, we have success here - the world's largest economy, extremely high standard of living, especially for a large, high population country of heterogeneous makeup.

Without teachers, there is no education. And everyone teaches, by example and by word, all the time. This is why your type of post is quite distressing - it's similar to someone telling a child that the police are all corrupt, that all members of the government are out to get them, that people of different races and religions are evil. The fact is, it's simply not true, and while any profession has less-desirable elements in it, they don't last long without outside factors - relative, friend, huge scarcity in the field, or something else.

300 students a year, 6 hours in the classroom each day, hundreds of hours of preparation, worry, define, refine, include, reteach, retest, be observed, do observing, all culminate once a year for those who teach seniors, like I do, in graduation at 8:30 tonight, when hundreds of students will become graduates, and it will be my privilege to see them in my neighborhood, as I do and have for the last two decades, as they share their success, family photos, job woes and triumphs, temporary setbacks and major disasters in life with me. It's my absolute privilege and joy - not one of them has ever been unkind to me, nor ignored me in the real world in all these years.

Beats banking, graphics arts, baby pictures, insurance sales, truck tire sales, newspaper writing, construction, oilfield work all hollow, and is a far more demanding and difficult job with real consequences than any other those other jobs I held previously.

[Starry Messenger]

7. That post is not credible at all.

[madfloridian]

3. Love it, need more of that.

[femmocrat]

6. Wish we could clone her and bring her to PA.

PSEA just rolled over for corbutt and let loose the hounds on teacher evaluations. Total nightmare here. The next thing is slashing the state pension system for new hires.