NEW YORK, NY April 12, 2008 —Randi Weingarten, the head of the city's United Federation of Teachers, is blasting the Bloomberg administration for what she calls scurrilous attacks on the union.

REPORTER: Speaking at the New York State United Teachers' annual conference in midtown Friday, she said the mayor and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein were wrong to blame the union for helping defeat a measure that would have made student academic performance a factor in tenure decisions:

WEINGARTEN: No matter what they do to present themselves as children's protectors, the wolf under their sheep's skin always shows through and you saw that this week big time.

REPORTER: State lawmakers killed the tenure reform measure after the union lobbied against it. The UFT head says this week's events gave her the ultimate reason to run for the presidency of the national teachers' union, the American Federation of Teachers. For his part, Schools chancellor Klein is praising Weingarten's decision to seek national office.