It sounds like they had at least two great speeches at the American Federation of Teachers Conference today.

One was from Randi Weingarten, the AFT President. You can read her entire speech here, and The New York Times’ article about it here. This was my favorite quote:

“Let’s refuse to be defined by people who are happy to lecture us about the state of public education — but wouldn’t last 10 minutes in a classroom!”

Amen to that!

She was followed by economist Paul Krugman.  It sounds like he made some very important points, too, and you can read about them in Dana Goldstein’s report, Krugman to Teachers’ Union: You’re Not to Blame for the Economic Crisis.