When a staunchly anti-union organization issued a "toolkit" for reporters covering the AFT QuEST convention, the AFT Public Affairs department geared up for a good fight. Instead, Jeanne Allen's Center for Education Reform (CER), a strident champion of the voucher blob [see side panel], gave us a good laugh.

CER's toolkit included a litany of questions, many along the lines of "When did you stop beating your wife?" Others refer to one of the many education crises identified by CER. In any case, we're happy to answer a few.

• How does the AFT work with and train its members to increase the achievement levels of English Language Learners? Our latest initiative to help educators working with ELL students is a new Web site, http://www.colorincolorado.org/, a joint project with WETA public television.

• With the ongoing complaint that parents are not involved, what effective community outreach strategies do AFT members implement? AFT's Educational Research and Dissemination program offers various courses for teachers, including The Home-School Connection: Partnerships Supporting Student Learning.

• What does class size have to do with student achievement? Smaller class size correlates with higher student achievement. It's easy to find the rigorous, independent studies that show positive results for small class sizes. CER could have found a good summary of the research on this AFT Web page.

Thanks for the questions, CER. And next time, don't bother producing a "reporter's guide"--just send an e-mail to your ultraconservative funders to let them know you're trying to stick it to those @#$%@#$ teacher unions.