Despite Image, Union Leader Backs Change for Schools
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, speaking with Bryan Reyes, left, and Joshua Dickey at the Green Dot New York Charter School in the Bronx.
By TRIP GABRIEL
Published: October 15, 2010
In “Waiting for Superman,” the new education documentary, the union leader Randi Weingarten is portrayed, in the words of Variety, as “a foaming satanic beast.”
Related
Times Topic: Randi Weingarten
Movie Review | 'Waiting for ‘Superman': Students Caught in the School Squeeze (September 24, 2010)
Washington Chancellor’s Departure Isn’t Expected to Slow Public School Change (October 14, 2010)
At a two-day education summit hosted by NBC News recently, the lopsided panels often featured Ms. Weingarten on one side, facing a murderer’s row ofcharter school founders and urban superintendents. Even Tom Brokawpiled on.
It’s nothing personal, really. Ms. Weingarten happens to be the most visible, powerful leader of unionized teachers, and in that role she personifies what many reformers see as the chief obstacle to lifting dismal schools: unions that protect incompetent teachers.
A combative labor leader who does not shrink from the spotlight, Ms. Weingarten has been fighting back. She issued a written rebuttal to “Waiting for Superman,” and she has publicly debated the film’s director, Davis Guggenheim, arguing that teachers have been made scapegoats. More to the point, the portrait of Ms. Weingarten as a demonic