It wasn’t that long ago that Education Action Group found its own cyber stalker site, a union-organized publication with the ironic title EAG Truth. Virtually every sentence on the website is filled with inaccuracies, distortions or misinformation aimed at discrediting our successful non-profit.

Weingarten's AFT: Purveyor of 'Anonymous' Internet Attacks

In the education reform world, it’s like a badge of honor if the teachers unions hate what you have to say and devote resources to counter your message online. It usually means that the ‘students first, union concerns second’ message is resonating with the public. That’s bad for union business.

The fact that Politico tracked the address of the AFT’s anti-Rhee website back to the union isn’t surprising. Neither is the personal attacks and doctored photos posted on the site. We’ve seen them before, and they aren’t pretty.

When StudentsFirst revealed that the site originated at AFT headquarters, the union barked back in typical fashion, questioning the funding of StudentsFirst. It’s the same response we’ve seen from other unions when we questioned their motives.

The tacky union websites, however, are a perfect example of why virtually all education non-profits keep their donor lists private: to avoid the ruthless tactics employed by Big Labor to silence those they oppose.

The anti-Rhee website is a clear sign that StudentsFirst is making headway in the education reform movement, and should be commended by students and taxpayers for their hard work. It’s no secret that union demands are often at odds with student needs, and many groups, including EAG and StudentsFirst, are working to ensure that public schools exist to educate students, not to provide union perks.

That’s a tough pill to swallow for teachers unions that have dominated the educational debate for decades. The AFT’s anti-Rhee website is only the latest sign that they will stoop to the lowest level to preserve the failed status quo.

In her former line of thinking, teachers’ unions oppose vouchers and teachers’ unions support Democrats, so Democrats should oppose vouchers.

Then she realized what vouchers were doing for the lives of those the teachers’ unions purport to care about.

She said she talked to parents who had researched their neighborhood school, figured out that it was a “failing school,” tried to move their child to a better school but were unable to due to enrollment caps.  Parents, unwilling to send their kids to a failing school, would ask Rhee what to do.

Using her own children as a guide, Rhee determined if she would not send her kids to a particular school, she should not expect other parents to, either.

“I was not willing to say to these parents and say to these mothers, ‘You know what? Just give me five years, right? Just take one for the team.  Your kid may not learn how to read and write and do math for those five years, but this is what is good for the system,’” she said in a speech covered by EAGtv.

“I would never accept that for my child so I was never going to put any other mother in that situation,” she said.

She said she came under criticism from friends, saying she was “going against the party.”

She called the whole experience “an epiphany.”

The fight for educational choice is well-defined: There are those who advocate for the education of children and those that advocate for an educational system.  She is agnostic about what works best.  But with that agnosticism comes the drive to step on the toes of those that seek to protect a system.

Rhee could have sided with those who protect the system out of ideology, but instead, she realized if there is a solution that works, it should be supported, regardless of the political consequences.

Now that the final bell has rung on NBC’s week-long Education Nation conference, we can ask the extra credit question: When did school choice go mainstream?

The “summit,” held at NBC’s New York studios at Rockefeller Center, almost felt like a publicity junket for Waiting for Superman, a highly praised new documentary advocating for charter schools. A national TV audience watched as D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee chewed out teachers union honcho Randi Weingarten for spending $1 million in campaign funds to halt Rhee’s reform agenda. Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski took a shot at Weingarten for resisting merit pay for teachers. And what to make of former Howard Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi working to promote National School Choice Week, slated for January 2011?

Will Democrats turn their newfound zeal for school choice into policies that actually banish unions from the classroom and empower parents and students? Reason.tv’s Michael Moynihan went to Education Nation to find out.

For more on Michelle Rhee and Washington, D.C.’s now aborted school reforms, read Katherine Mangu-Ward’s feature story from Reason’s May 2010 issue .

Produced by Jim Epstein and Michael Moynihan, with help from Joshua Swain. Approximately 4.15 minutes.

Go to Reason.tv for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason.tv’s YouTube channel to receive automatic notification when new material goes online.

Teachers unions suggest that the way to retain “good” teachers is to pay them all more.  The collectivist mentality is that every teacher is equal, works equally hard and should be compensated equally.

Many reformers believe that the way to spur improvement and innovation is to reward success, hard work and hold the adults accountable for student achievement.  That, of course, flies in the face of collectivism because it incentivizes individual teacher achievement.

This is a result of organized labor having such an iron grip on many American public schools.  Weak-kneed school boards and administrators have allowed Big Labor to be the gate-keepers of reform efforts.

And worse, apathetic taxpayers allow Big Labor to call the shots.  Just ask Washington, DC Mayor Adrian Fenty.

Fenty has been aggressive at reforming DC Public Schools, which has frittered away hundreds of millions of dollars over the years and produced some of the worse results in the country.  Fenty hired Michelle Rhee, a reformer that pushed for performance pay for teachers, making it easier to remove ineffective teachers and other reforms that are an affront to labor leaders.

According to Politico, the American Federation of Teachers plopped $1 million down to defeat Fenty and thus Rhee.  It was successful and now Rhee’s DC days are limited.

So labor unions know if they can’t knee-cap the reform initiatives, they can defeat the leaders pushing the ideas.

School employee unions have been steadfast in their defense of their members.  The end result?  Bad teachers stay in the system.

A New York City principal was quoted in New Yorker magazine as saying Weingarten “would protect a dead body in the classroom.”

One has to wonder what type of quality education a “dead body” could deliver to students.

With “Waiting for Superman,” a new documentary on the state of public education, as well as NBC’s Education Nation taking center stage this week, a serious debate over labor reform must accompany any discussions about the education system.

If teachers want to take the credit for pockets of success, they must also share the blame for widespread failure.

Here at The Washington Examiner we have read with interest editorials written by our friends at the Washington Post denouncing the greed of the Montgomery County teachers’ unions. Unfortunately, their editorials (and ours) don’t seem to have cut much ice with the county’s gentry liberals, who either stayed home (turnout was a record low) or did the bidding of the unions.

But the most stark demonstration of the public employee unions’ power came in the District of Columbia, where Mayor Adrian Fenty was defeated in the Democratic primary by Council Chairman Vincent Gray. There’s no Republican candidate, and Gray is as good as elected.

Four years ago, Fenty carried every precinct in the city. In office he has drawn national attention for his appointment of Michelle Rhee as school chancellor. Rhee’s reforms have produced higher test scores, stable rather than declining enrollment, a teacher evaluations system that has resulted in dismissals of dozens of incompetents, and a union contract giving administrators greater flexibility in assignments.

Rhee won national acclaim but antagonized politicians like Gray with deep roots in Washington’s black community. Blacks here as in most large cities have been more likely than average to work in public-sector jobs — a legacy of the days half a century ago when governments, at least north of the Potomac, didn’t discriminate against blacks as many private firms did.

As a result, Gray struck a chord with black voters when he denounced Rhee’s teacher layoffs — the same layoffs that gentry liberals hailed as eliminating bad teachers who hold back children from poor families.

This divide is apparent when you look at the election returns. Gray won citywide by a 54 to 44 percent margin. Fenty won 72 percent in Ward 2 (Georgetown and West End) and 79 percent in Ward 3 (west of Rock Creek Park), both dominated by gentry liberals. Gray won 82 percent in Wards 7 and 8 (east of the Anacostia River), both heavily black.

Gentry liberals and public employee unions were allies in the Obama campaign in 2008. But now they’re in a civil war in city and state politics. This raises the question of whether the Democratic Party favors public employee unions that want more money and less accountability, or gentry liberals and others who care about the quality of public services. Right now the unions are winning.

Read the whole thing here.

The biggest winner in the election was not Gray, but rather Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT, the teachers’ union that represents DC school employees.

The school chancellor, Michelle Rhee, was appointed by Fenty and was aggressive at reforming the district that had been spending the most per student but achieving some of the worst results in the nation.  She had pushed for eliminating ineffective teachers, rewarding the good ones and holding the adults more accountable for student outcomes.

All of Rhee’s efforts turned Weingarten’s stomach.  So, like a typical labor boss, she decided the problem – Rhee – had to be dealt with, which meant Rhee’s  boss – Fenty – needed to go.

Politico reported that the AFT gave $1 million “to a labor-backed independent expenditure campaign” that supported Gray’s candidacy.

Perhaps the most telling sentence from a related Politico article:

And while the teachers union has been careful not to claim the scalps of Fenty and his schools chancellor, Michelle Rhee, the election may serve as a political shot across the bows of other urban officials considering similar policies.

Weingarten and other labor bosses knew defeating Fenty – and in essence Rhee – would have a chilling effect on reform of America’s pathetic urban school districts.

How sad that Weingarten is content with the status quo in these cities.  How sad that Weingarten fights for the rights of adults over the rights of students.  But what should we expect?  One of Weingarten’s predecessors, Albert Shanker, said it best:

“When schoolchildren start paying dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of schoolchildren.”

Rhee was clear in her analysis of the situation.  She was quoted in the Washington Post:

“Yesterday’s election results were devastating, devastating,” Rhee said. “Not for me, because I’ll be fine, and not even for Fenty because he’ll be fine, but devastating for the schoolchildren of Washington, D.C.”

…

“I think part of the problem in public education to date has been that we all have to feel good, let’s not ruffle too many feathers,” she said, noting that when she arrived in 2007, eight percent of the District’s eighth graders were doing math at grade level.

“I am not going to sugarcoat that,” she said. “I am not going to make you feel better about that. That is an outcome that is absolutely criminal.”

Weingarten’s win means public education in our nation’s capital will continue puttering along, sucking more dollars and putting students further behind their peers in other districts, states and nations. Meanwhile, Weingarten’s union members are secure in their jobs.

This lady is not afraid of a major challenge, as evidenced by her latest brawl with the AFT.

Rhee is courageously targeting the sacred cow of teachers unions – tenure. It’s the system that pretty much guarantees a teacher a job for life, if he or she can make it through the first few years. It doesn’t matter if they go on to become good, mediocre or bad teachers. With tenure, they are pretty much protected until retirement.

But Rhee understands that such a system can no longer be tolerated in Washington D.C. schools, which have a dropout rate of nearly 40 percent. She knows that the school district must have the power to sift through the teaching staff, keep the good ones, work with the middle-of-the-roaders, and get rid of the bad apples.

She also understands that it has to work both ways. She’s willing to develop a compensation system that would offer teachers much higher pay, in exchange for the union abandoning, or at least reforming, the concept of tenure.

We have no problem with that at all. Teachers are extremely important in our society, and good ones deserve to be paid like the vital professionals they are. While schools throughout the nation are struggling with their budgets, we’re sure that most would be happy to find the money to increase teacher salaries, if only they had to power to pick and choose what teachers to keep.

Rhee has already backed up her words with action. Earlier this year she hired more than 900 new teachers for the district, then weeks later laid off 266, citing budget constraints. But the layoffs weren’t limited to the recent hires. She made cuts based on ability, not seniority, a move that drove the AFT into court to challenge Rhee’s decision.

According to the Wall Street Journal, AFT President Randi Weingarten said Rhee “has so poisoned the environment that I am not sure that we can ever get back to a good situation here.”

That’s where you’re dead wrong, Ms. Weingarten. Rhee’s “poison” is exactly the proper remedy to get D.C. schools back on track, and restore public confidence in the district.

Families aren’t interested in a teacher’s longevity, Ms. Weingarten. They want to know if that teacher can manage to help their children reach their potential, and if not, then he or she no longer belongs in a classroom.