Based on an initial review of the U.S. Department of Education's plan for reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, it appears that despite some promising rhetoric, this blueprint places 100 percent of the responsibility on teachers and gives them zero percent authority, AFT president Randi Weingarten says.

The new standards released on March 10 by the Common Core State Standards Initiative represent the best effort so far to transform today's patchwork quilt of 50 sets of state standards into one set of strong, consistent expectations for what all students should know and learn, AFT president Randi Weingarten says.