8/31/2024
Time for new leadership in the TEACHERS UNION. She has been in bed with the Democrats so long that it is time to buy some new sheets since the linens are worn out.
ttps://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/completely-out-of-touch-with-real-people-teachers-union-president-responds-to-jd-vance-s-comments/vi-AA1pMktk?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=6fa3a8b9f1314f539d9035190086521b&ei=14
Why Should DHS Take Randi Weingarten Seriously after the Pandemic? | RealClearPolicy
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Why Should DHS Take Randi Weingarten Seriously after the Pandemic?
By Michael O’Neill
July 26, 2023
On June 21, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced new appointments to its Homeland Security Academic Partnership Council. Among them was Randi Weingarten, who, when not retweeting liberal op-eds and political endorsements dozens of times a day, leads the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). In her new government “advisory” post, Weingarten will now advise the DHS on scholarship funding and research opportunities, school safety, and career development for the DHS workforce of the future.
Among deans, superintendents, and law enforcement officials, Weingarten stands out as perhaps the most baffling appointment given her recent professional track record. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Weingarten battled to keep schools closed, acting as a consultant for the Center for Disease Control (CDC). Since then, she has done nothing but obfuscate and mislead about her role in keeping children out of classrooms to keep the shifting political winds ever at her back.
In an April hearing of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, Weingarten claimed that “we [the AFT] spent every day from February on trying to get schools open…,” This echoed previous comments she had made, among other places, in a 2021 speech to AFT membership. In the same April hearing, she also said that the CDC consulted the AFT on guidelines for reopening schools, but that the CDC was not influenced by the AFT in their decisions to prevent full reopening in February of 2021.
Unfortunately, the truth about her stance on school closures seems to be quite the opposite. In tweets throughout 2020, she repeatedly lauded school closings, such as those in downstate New York that October, stating “I agree, @AndyPallotta! ‘Erring on the side of caution means closing school buildings when there is serious risk of spreading COVID-19, and we believe the state is taking the right steps by seeking to close schools in these hotspots.’@nysut.” Earlier in 2020, she labeled Trump-era plans to re-open school doors in the fall as “cruel” and “reckless.” She even went so far as to suggest the AFT go on strike if teachers were told to do their jobs in person.
Weingarten’s statements about AFT’s involvement with the CDC are no closer to reality. In multiple emails from February 2021, Weingarten’s staff demanded that the CDC include triggers in their guidelines which would shut down schools again if COVID numbers rose. The government provided copies of CDC guidelines and sought input from AFT before their publication. The CDC incorporated those edits into their final product. This access to, and influence on, CDC decision-making was undoubtedly reinforced by direct phone calls from Weingarten to CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky. Despite their repeated requests, these transcripts have still not been provided to Congress.
Perhaps amnesia explains Weingarten’s revisionist history of her terrible policies. But regardless of the source or motivation for her misstatements, the question remains as to what exactly in her dismal record qualifies Weingarten to advise DHS on academic policy and school safety. The American people deserve an answer. The House Oversight or Homeland Security Committee ought to ask the question.
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ttps://www.npr.org/2021/03/24/980592512/new-data-highlight-disparities-in-students-learning-in-person
Education
New Data Highlight Disparities In Students Learning In Person
March 24, 20211:00 AM
.New Data Highlight Disparities In Students Learning In Person
March 24, 20211:00 AM ET
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The U.S. Education Department has released the first in a series of school surveys intended to provide a national view of learning during the pandemic. It reveals that the percentage of students who are still attending school virtually may be higher than previously understood.
As of January and early February of this year, 43% of elementary students and 48% of middle school students in the survey remained fully remote. And the survey found large differences by race: 68% of Asian, 58% of Black and 56% of Hispanic fourth graders were learning entirely remotely, while just 27% of White students were.
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Conversely, nearly half of white fourth-graders were learning full-time in person, compared with just 15% of Asian, 28% of Black and 33% of Hispanic fourth-graders. The remainder had hybrid schedules.
This disparity may be partly driven by where students live. City schools, the survey found, are less likely than rural schools to offer full-time, in-person classes. Full-time, in-person schooling dominated in the South and the Midwest, and was much less common in the West and Northeast.
The racial and ethnic gaps may also be driven in part by which families are choosing to stay remote, even where some in-person learning is offered. Three out of 4 districts around the country were offering some in-person learning as of January, the report says, with full-time, in person learning more common than hybrid schedules.
The Education Department created the survey in response to an executive action signed by President Biden on his first full day in office. To obtain results quickly, researchers used the existing infrastructure of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the testing program also known as “The Nation’s Report Card.”
More than a year after schools around the country first switched to virtual learning, this is the first attempt at federal data collection on the progress of school reopening. Although the Trump administration pushed for school reopening, it made no such efforts. “I’m not sure there’s a role at the department to collect and compile that research,” former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said last October.
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This survey covers a nationally representative sample of around 7,000 schools, half of which were educating fourth-graders and the other half educating eighth-graders (those being grades included in The Nation’s Report Card testing).
New results will be reported monthly through at least July. The results are intended to provide context for The Nation’s Report Card in 2022, and state tests, which the Biden administration is requiring this year.
The survey is also intended to pinpoint inequities. For example, among the other key findings: More than 4 in 10 districts said they were giving priority to students with disabilities for in-person instruction. Yet in practice, 38% of elementary students with disabilities remained remote, compared with 43% overall. Many families of students with disabilities have said that their children receive limited benefit from virtual learning.
Finally, this pilot survey asked how many hours of live video instruction students were receiving when learning remotely. The majority of schools said they are offering more than three hours per day. But 10% of eighth-graders, and 5% of fourth-graders, are getting no live instruction at all when learning remotely. They may be working on other activities such as homework packets, or software, or watching pre-recorded lessons.
The response rate to this nationally representative survey varied around the country and was lowest in the Northeast. Notably, out of 27 large urban districts targeted in the survey, 16 declined to participate.
Previously, NPR has been citing school reopening data provided by an organization called Burbio. Burbio scrapes school district websites to find out whether school is being offered hybrid, full-time or all-virtual. Their data set — 1,200 school districts representing 35,000 schools and nearly half of the U.S. school population, is larger than that covered in this federal survey.
‘Completely out of touch with real people’: Teachers union president responds to JD Vance’s comments
MSNBC’s the Rev. Al Sharpton speaks with Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, about JD Vance’s attacks on teachers and “childless women.
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