Weingarten is Elected AFT President, Keeps UFT Job;
Calls for Scrapping 'No Child'
By DAVID SIMS

United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten July 14 was elected without opposition as president of the American Federation of Teachers at the national union's convention in Chicago, where she sharply criticized President Bush's education programs as "a blunt instrument for attacking, not assisting, our public schools."

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Will do double duty.

Ms. Weingarten, who has served as president of the UFT for 10 years, was elected along with Antonia Cortese as secretary-treasurer and Lorretta Johnson as executive vice president. She succeeds Edward J. McElroy, who retired.

Vision Extends Beyond Schools

"The three of us are committed to improving schools, hospitals and public institutions for children, families and communities," Ms. Weingarten said in her acceptance speech. "We will build on this union's great tradition of confronting injustice, embracing the excluded, questioning conventional wisdom, challenging the status quo - and working 24/7 to improve the institutions where our members work."

Ms. Cortese was previously AFT executive vice president, a post she held for four years, and an AFT vice president for 30 years before that, during a period when she was also a top officials of New York State United Teachers. Ms. Johnson is the president of AFT-Maryland and also serves as the president of the Baltimore Teachers Union paraprofessional chapter. The 1.4-million-member AFT is the second biggest Teachers union in the country, after the National Education Association.

The AFT convention also formally endorsed U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee for President of the United States. Marilyn Stewart, president of the Chicago Teachers union, described Mr. Obama as "a friend to both education and organized labor." Via satellite, Senator Obama pledged to "change education in this country" and said he was "tired of hearing you, the Teachers who work so hard, blamed for our problems." He received a standing ovation from the convention delegates.

In her first speech as AFT President, Ms. Weingarten aggressively went after the No Child Left Behind Act, which she said "has outlived whatever usefulness it ever had" and "is too badly broken to be fixed." Acknowledging the shift from her earlier position calling for revisions in the Bush education program, Ms. Weingarten said, "For years, we tried to correct what was wrong with NCLB. But now we know better: NCLB does not work ... [it] has become a blunt instrument for attacking, not assisting, our public schools."

A Transition From Clinton

Ms. Weingarten, who had previously been a prime backer of U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential race, also gave a full-throated endorsement to Senator Obama, saying: "I have no doubt that we will work enthusiastically to make him President - and those of us who supported Hillary Clinton will fight just as fiercely for Barack Obama." Her speech was nonetheless a clear attempt to nudge Senator Obama, who along with the NEA, has so far only called for an overhaul of NCLB, rather that an entirely new Federal education law.

Despite assuming this new position, Ms. Weingarten will remain president of the UFT, much like Albert Shanker and Sandra Feldman, previous UFT heads who ascended to the presidency of the AFT, running the national union between 1974 and 2004, with Mr. Shanker spending more than a decade of his tenure also heading the UFT.

Ms. Weingarten, who at least for the moment will retain the UFT post, has not yet addressed how she will divide her time between the two jobs, calling her new position "a work in progress" and saying that she will "play it by ear."