With the governor urging action, the New York Legislature is considering lifting the cap on the number of charter schools in the state.
This has presented Michael Mulgrew, the new president of New York City's teachers union, with a choice: stand with the reformers, straddle the line or go to the mattresses against change.
He has chosen what's behind door No. 3.
In fact, despite the emergence of a powerful new national reform consensus led by President Obama, Mulgrew is consistently proving himself to be a bare-knuckled trench-fighter - a throwback to the muscle-flexing union leaders of the distant past.
Witness the evolution. In 1998, the UFT was one of the chief opponents of the original charter-school law. But in subsequent years, Mulgrew's predecessor, Randi Weingarten, repositioned it as a progressive union that did not fear charters and, in fact, embraced them. Weingarten's boldest move in this regard was her decision to open two UFT charter schools.
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