EDUCATION DEFORM UPDATE

Gary Imhoff, DC Watch - Chancellor Michelle Rhee's war against DC school teachers and their union led her to overreach with a maneuver that was too cute by half - to hire many more teachers than she needed for this school year in order to provide an excuse for largely arbitrary firings, calling them a reduction in force. That offended not just veteran teachers, but also younger teachers who realized that they, too, would be the targets of Rhee's iron whims. It showed students and DCPS parents how Rhee's methods, when put in practice, would harm them. And it energized government workers and unions - not just local unions, but national union leaders - in recognition that the Fenty administration is engaged not in an effort to improve education, but in an effort to bust public employee unions.

Ed Week - The hard-charging District of Columbia schools chancellor is used to causing turbulence, but she is drawing the fiercest fire of her two-year tenure this week after she ordered the layoffs of nearly 400 school employees, more than half of them teachers. Yesterday, thousands of teachers and labor supporters swarmed the Freedom Plaza in downtown Washington to demonstrate against the chancellor and her decision to dismiss 229 teachers, a move she says is necessary to plug a $40 million hole in the school district's budget. The Washington Teachers Union has also filed a lawsuit in D.C. Superior Court seeking to stop the layoffs.

Yesterday's protest was striking for its large turnout, and the high-profile labor leaders it drew, including American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten and the president of the AFL-CIO, Richard L. Trumka.

So Rhee, who for more than a year has been promising to deliver a "revolutionary" teachers contract that would upend decades of labor tradition in public school systems, finds herself in the spotlight for labor strife, not labor progress.