AFT president Edward J. McElroy this week added to the barrage of e-mails, faxes and letters from AFT leaders and members in response to a Jan. 13 Wall Street Journal opinion piece by Terry M. Moe attacking collective bargaining for teachers (see last week's Inside AFT). In a Jan. 19 letter responding to Moe's article, McElroy noted, "Reasonable class sizes, safe and well-equipped schools, high standards for conduct and achievement, and well-prepared and adequately supported teachers are entirely appropriate goals for teachers unions to pursue. But in the face of these facts, Terry M. Moe regurgitates several tired canards about teacher unions to bolster his view that unions act solely in their own interest and 'impede efforts to improve public schools.'" While the AFT works to improve teaching conditions and improve wages for members, said McElroy, "it also has bargained contracts that provide mentors for new or struggling teachers, professional development in the best and latest research on reading instruction, discipline provisions that create a climate for learning, and the framework to work with school district partners to redesign low-performing schools using strategies with demonstrated success. Is this blatant self-interest? Absolutely, because one cannot separate the interests of teachers from those of the students they teach.