Mayor Bloomberg Mad at Teachers Union

Randi Weingarten=Sandra Froman? Mayor Bloomberg had some fighting words for those who criticize his handling of the public schools. He compared his critics to the National Rifle Association: "You always do have the problem of a very small group of people who are single-issue focused having a disproportionate percentage of power. That's exactly the NRA." He also accused the UFT of wanting to roll back reforms:

There's the political power of people who just want to pander when they come out and they find something wrong with everything. There are the newspapers that can never find anything good enough. They're in favor of change but they've never yet in their whole publishing history seen a change that was good enough.

The UFT and other groups have questioned his next steps to further reorganize the school system. Weingarten, president of the the UFT, told the NY Times, “When the mayor sometimes is in a bad mood, he goes off in ways that he shouldn’t go off, but it’s not often that the mayor makes comments that are reminiscent of Giuliani-like comments. This may be a change of direction, because the mayor usually supports the teachers.”

NYC Public School Parents is a new blog from the perspective of NYC public school parents; Diane Ravitch has an interesting post about why Weingartern was re-elected by a landslide.