Schools Matter on union leader duplicity - or how many sides of your mouth can you speak out of at the same time?

As a follow up to our Newark post the other day (Randi, Cami and Newark: Anyone for a Quisling Refe...) and after some flame wars with Randi and Leo on twitter today (which I hope to follow up on) here is a piece from Schools Matter worth checking out.

On December 10 Randi Weingarten flew into Newark with her gold-plated bullhorn to protest the entirely predicted outcome to a teacher contract that she helped negotiate just over a year ago.  

At the time, the Newark agreement gave bragging rights to Republican governor Chris Christie for making New Jersey the first state in the Union to base teacher pay on student test scores and on a teacher evaluation scheme that was nothing more than a Christie promise when Weingarten signed off on it.   

Now, with teacher grievances piling up based on the meritless merit pay plan that Weingarten approved of last year, a visit to Newark was called for in order to pretend that Randi was against the contract all along.

The facts tell a different story, however. Upon approving of the new contract last November, Weingarten gushed,

“This agreement ensures that teacher voice, quality and experience are aligned with increased professionalism and better compensation.”

In an interview on December10, 2013 Weingarten had something quite different to say about the contract that her posse of lawyers helped to craft in 2012:

Weingarten aimed some of her harshest and most personal criticism at the teacher contract ratified last November, criticizing not only state appointed schools Superintendent Cami Anderson, but also the man who appointed her, Gov. Chris Christie, who gave the final go-ahead to that labor agreement.

“A lot of people feel a huge sense of betrayal,” Weingarten said. . . “You made a promise to act differently, and you have instead acted exactly the same,” she said of Christie.

Classic Weingarten, who knows more about betrayal than she is willing to admit.

Excerpt from Schools Matter

Remember Newark?  Just exercise a little trust in corporate ed reformers to get it right. What can go wrong?

So remember – the next time that Weingarten comes to your town with her bullhorn and satin handcuffs, along with her posse of fellow lawyers trained in obfuscation and the art of the diplomatic lie, and her well-rehearsed expressions of solidarity with parents, children, and teachers, I hope that you will ask her which of the policies that she now protests are ones that she did not support at some point in the very recent past, or even the present, or even the future--if we can just get it right.

Read entire piece: http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2013/12/weingarten-joins-union-enemy-john.html