Gates vs. Weingarten
Dan Lyons (aka Fake Steve Jobs), managed to get Bill Gates and queen of the teachers union Randi Weingarten in the same room together, and published the interview Monday on Newsweek. The meaningful moment of discord comes on page 4, when Lyons suggests tenure for teachers is ridiculous. After offering what has become the standard response, “tenure is a proxy for fairness” (I keep hearing this from education academics, too–it’s in some memo the Status Quo Federation is passing around), Weingarten deflects the accusation and suggests the real problem is a lack of “support” for teachers, aka funding:
We do not have an epidemic of bad teachers. But we don’t support our teachers the way countries that outcompete us do. These other countries spend a lot of time figuring out how to prepare and how to support teachers and how to align teachers’ work with what kids ought to do.
Then Gates nails it:
No, we spend more on professional development than they do. We spend more on salaries than they do. We spend more on pensions than they do. We spend more on retirement health benefits than they do. But we have less evaluation than they do. In many districts you have to give advance notice before anybody can come into your classroom. That’s part of the contract. So there are some real differences in terms of the personnel system in these other countries.
I realize Weingarten is only doing her job when she spins words like tenure and evaluation. Unfortunately, painting evaluation in the public mind as an attack on teachers is an effective way to ensure job security for her constituents. But no one intends evaluation as an attack–it’s the way to help them and the system improve.
I’d be interested to discover where the “tenure as a proxy for fairness” line originated. If you have tips, send ‘em my way in the comments or to mattwbowman@gmail.com.
image credit: Gates, Weingarten
