Here's Steve Perry, the founder and principal of the Capital Preparatory Magnet School in Hartford, calling out the aforementioned gutless weasels:

Cowardice led a handful of legislators to be manipulated like puppets by the Connecticut Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers.

Democratic co-chairmen of the General Assembly's Education Committee, Rep. Andrew Fleischmann, D-West Hartford, and Sen. Andrea Stillman, D-Waterford, handed over one of the nation's most promising education reform efforts to the teachers' unions like bullied third graders. Armed with outdated and disconnected lore of what teachers really believe, the frightened few carelessly heaped more hurt on the most needy children in Connecticut by making significant revisions in the education reform bill proposed by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.

…The feuding AFT and CEA came together over the weekend for the one thing upon which they will always agree — protecting the jobs of their members no matter the cost to the education of our children. Their dogma has proven to be an airborne poison — you don't know its effect until you know and when you find out it's too late. Sadly, we will soon know the effect of forcing children back into the 15 worst schools in the state to ensure that the educators will keep their jobs.

Rep. Fleischmann and Sen. Stillman have proven themselves to be as ineffective in their role as educational leaders as the few failed educators who they protected through their capitulation. As Rep. Fleischmann celebrates his new job as CEO of the Nutmeg Big Brothers Big Sisters, he will share the same dubious distinction as the union he has protected. He will be responsible for worsening the prospects of the children he has been entrusted to serve.

As I was bombarded by those goofy CEA television commercials recently, I thought, "no one is actually buying this … right?" It's the same way I felt when I was a teenager watching late-night infomercials, "nobody really believes that Suzanne Somers stays thin with that thing … right?' Apparently some people do. So, congrats Rep. Fleischmann and Sen. Stillman on compromising Connecticut's most needy children's future and with it your purchase of education's ThighMaster.

-------------------