End of the UFT Is Talk, After a Parley in L.A.

 The NY and LA teacher unions do everything in their power to squash charter schools -- and then come to study them for reform ideas (and maybe even a partnership).  You can't make up such hypocrisy!

 

These two articles really capture an important element of charter schools that critics never address -- they act as powerful change agents for the entire broken, dysfunctional system!

Ms. Weingarten said she wanted to visit the Green Dot schools, whose union status is unique among charter schools and which boast an 81% graduation rate, in order to see them for herself. After visiting two, she said she was impressed. "They are very teacher-centered," she said. "It's obvious, the teacher professionalism and collaboration that is the center of these schools."...

Many union leaders strongly oppose charter schools, which are privately run but publicly funded. Ms. Weingarten has taken a softer stance, even opening two charter schools of her own.

"She gets that choice is coming to public education, so she's out in the front, instead of just waiting to get run over by it like some of her colleagues," Andrew Rotherham, the co-director of an education think tank, Education Sector, said.

During her trip, Ms. Weingarten also met with the philanthropist Eli Broad, who gave Green Dot $10.5 million last year.

 

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End of the UFT Is Talk, After a Parley in L.A.

BY ELIZABETH GREEN - Staff Reporter of the Sun
June 11, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/56244

A possible deal with a Los Angeles charter school group has infuriated opponents of the teachers union president, Randi Weingarten, with one opposition leader decrying "the end of the union." The charter group, known as Green Dot, has been battling its local teachers union over how much to protect teachers.