This article by Lindsey Layton up at the Washington Post, Teachers union convention opens, Common Core on table, is very telling.  The opening 2 paragraphs lay out a real narrative changer:

“In response to teachers who are uneasy with the Common Core State Standards, a major teachers union is offering to underwrite projects crafted by teachers to improve the math and reading standards.

Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, is expected to announce Friday that the union will give up to five grants worth as much as $30,000 to teachers for projects aimed at reforming the standards.”

Wait, what?
We’ve been told over and over by supporters that all teacher love the Common Core.

30k? That tells me Weingarten’s move here is likely just symbolic and an attempt at appeasing the membership who are very nervous about the testing tied to performance and pay. This looks to me more like  a warning shot across the bow of the Dept. of Education and this administration.

Reminder: Weingarten was for the Core before she was against it…if she is really against it now, that is. Weingarten has her own agenda.

One more excerpt, emphasis added is mine but the hypocrisy and irony is theirs:

“’This is about a union listening to its members, listening to educators who say ‘We have a better way’,” said Weingarten, who is expected to be easily re-elected to another two-year term at the convention. 

Both AFT and NEA members were involved in the writing of the Common Core standards, but “teacher voices have not been strongly enough represented in their development or their rollout,” Weingarten said.”

 UPDATE: Read this post by Mercedes Schneider:  The Problem with the AFT Offer for Teachers to “Rewrite” the Common Core