Feb 14, 2008 11:17 AM
Invited to speak about the union’s position on the current state of the city’s schools at a breakfast meeting with business leaders, UFT President Randi Weingarten stressed the need to attract and retain good teachers and urged that schools that work be left alone while focusing on helping struggling schools and, most important, the urgency of lowering class size. “Students can’t be anonymous numbers or test scores,” she explained. At the Jan. 17 briefing of PENCIL Business Partners — an organization of business leaders working to create partnerships with schools — at the Time Warner Center, Weingarten also noted that for education reform to be done well “it must happen incrementally, building on the past and moving forward. Not by introducing something new every nano-second.” She presented five recommendations for successful schools that included collaborative leadership, fair and transparent accountability for all and community involvement.