Tom Carroll outlines the union's clever strategy to kill charter schools without actually admitting that that's what they're trying to do:

The state teachers union, New York State United Teachers, is working this week with a key ally, state Sen. Bill Perkins, to smear charter schools as badly as possible.

NYSUT is set to release a harsh report assembling every bit of dirt it can find on charters across the state. On Thursday comes Perkins' public hearing, which will add more tar and feathers. The clear goal is to derail the growing pressure to lift the cap on the overall number of charters in New York.

The state lost out in Round One of the competition for federal Race to the Top dollars in good part because it had failed to raise the cap. The question now is whether the governor and Legislature will raise it in time for the June 1 deadline for Round Two applications.

With President Obama praising and promoting charter schools, NYSUT has changed its rhetoric. It no longer opposes charters outright -- but instead combines insincere rhetorical support for the concept with a bare-knuckles effort to disable them in the name of preventing "abuses."

The union's strategy plainly has four main parts:

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