Contrary?

The conventional wisdom on the Weingarten “glacial curtain” speech was that it was a big win for AFT and in the zero-sum nature of these things a loss for the National Education Association, which seems behind the times on these issues.   Everyone is emailing around this weekend’s NYT editorial saying as much and challenging Weingarten to deliver on this.

But that CW may well turn out to be wrong.   Obviously far too soon to tell but it’s possible that by by staying quiet the NEA may have chosen the wiser strategy.    This situation around teacher evaluation in Houston shows how difficult it’s going to be for Weingarten to really deliver on this in a meaningful way given the politics she has to manage.    It’s true that nothing ventured, nothing gained.  But it’s also true in public affairs that sometimes nothing ventured is nothing lost.