WASHINGTON, D.C.--Staking out her own agenda, Sandra Feldman called on teachers to participate in closing non-performing schools and redesigning them in her first speech as president to the 940,000-member American Federation of Teachers.

The speech at the opening of the union's annual QuEST conference here was notable for several reasons.

This was the public initiation of the direction Feldman wants to take the union. Ideologically, she is quite close to the leadership of the union's long-time president, Al Shanker, who died earlier this year of cancer. She endorsed his issues of high standards for students, high-stakes incentives for students to work hard, and strong discipline actions. She pledged several times to "fight" against what she said were serious threats to public education, such as vouchers.

However, if there was a shade of difference between Shanker and Feldman, it might be the new president's greater emphasis in her speech on teacher quality issues and student-centered policies.

The union, she said, will continue to press for reform of teacher education, higher entry standards to the profession, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, and union-designed peer intervention programs. Polls of AFT members show, she said, that "they don't want incompetent teachers in classrooms, and they have more faith--and rightly so--in our ability to do something about it than in their administrations."

Peer intervention programs began with an AFT local in Toledo more than 15 years ago. They now help screen new teachers and aid teachers in trouble, recommending they take up another profession, if necessary, in Cincinnati, Rochester, Minneapolis and New York City, among the larger districts.

At first, Feldman's proposal to "get out front and center on turning around or shutting down failing schools" was met with polite applause from the more than 2,000 AFT members in the audience. But as it dawned on people that she wanted teachers to take charge of what is becoming an inevitable process in many states and districts, they warmed up to the idea. "Put very simply and most starkly," she said, "I propose that we do not defend or seek to perpetuate failing schools to which we would not send our own children."

AFT opposed reconstitution of schools in San Francisco and in Philadelphia, but Feldman says that is because it was done badly--"rudely, crudely--getting rid of people instead of bad practices."

With NEA leaders sitting just below her podium, Feldman also seemed to be saying that by proposing teachers become involved in the process of closing and redesigning failing schools she has gone a step further in putting quality issues on the bargaining table.

This is a major theme of NEA's new president, Bob Chase.

Still, the combined rhetoric of first Chase, notably at a speech to the Press Club earlier this year, and now Feldman indicate some major shifts in union policies. Merger talks between the two unions continued last week, and most experts predict the two teacher organizations will become one union within the next few years.