Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, gave a mostly robotic interview to NPR's All Things Considered yesterday. Like any media-trained politician, she refused to answer Melissa Block's questions and kept coming back to her talking points. [quote] (I'm still not sure to what she's referring when she says the ESEA blueprint released by the Obama Administration "places 100 percent of responsibility for improvement on teachers, but doesn't give them the support and resources they need to get the job done." How exactly does it do that?)
But the real news is that she actually said something positive about the blueprint (surely a slip from her script, as she's been trying to draw as tough a line as possible). I believe that might be the first time since the plan was released over the weekend that either union president has done so. Specifically:
BLOCK: Do you think this plan from the Obama administration is an improvement on No Child Left Behind?Ms. WEINGARTEN: Look, we all know No Child Left Behind needs to change. And there are things about this proposal that are so much better than No Child Left Behind, but we need to make it work. And ultimately, if the balance is off, then it's not going to work, and then it's not going to be any better than what we have right now.
There you have it--it's "so much better" than No Child Left Behind, Weingarten says. Finally some honesty!
-Mike Petrilli
