The Daily Riff - BE SMARTER. ABOUT EDUCATION.

Cartoon Orig. Published 1/12/10

TIMELINE Updates on Weingarten:  

2/24/10  On Anderson Cooper's 360 with video debate - link HERE - re: Firing of Rhode
               Island's Central Falls HS Faculty            

1/29/10   Joe Scarborough and Carl Bernstein on MSNBC's Morning Joe with AFT Head
               Randi Weingarten in Heated Exchange - see video Link HERE

1/21/10   Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski Zero in on Excellence- Talk Union practices     
                with video  HERE

1/11/10   Joe Scarborough and Al Sharpton Talk About "Turning The Tables Over In Education"
                with video HERE

1/12/10 Posting

Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) union, gave a speech today in Washington DC giving "Four Approaches to Quality Teaching and Better Schools", where she addressed "due process" (translation: whether and how teachers can be fired), among other initiatives.  Full text here.

On a related note, during a Fall '09 visit to MSNBC's "Morning Joe",  Weingarten gave a circuitous answer to Joe Scarborough's questioning about whether teachers should be "fired".  The segment included Mika Brzezinski, Harold Ford, Chairman of the Democratic Leader Council, and Nicole Wallace, writer and political consultant.

Her answer included phrases such as "counseling out" of the profession. 
Do "rubber rooms" qualify as counseling out (see TDR's Detroit story and The New Yorker article on rubber rooms here)?

Watch Vid below, you can fast forward to 2 minutes 15 seconds, for the specific reference: