While it’s no secret that The American Federation of Teachers, the parent union of the local Washington Teachers’ Union, isn’t thrilled about the merit pay proposal being negotiated between the WTU and DCPS, the AFT had thus far stayed on the sidelines of the controversy. Not so much anymore.

DCPS teacher and local blogger DC Teacher Chic reports today that she was called by a pollster from the Hart Research Group, who asked a series of leading questions written to elicit responses against the merit pay plan (which DC Teacher Chic happens to support). She writes:

At the end of the survey, I just had to ask who was financing this poll. The woman replied, “The American Federation of Teachers.” I told her that much was obvious, since the questions were geared toward making people dislike the proposal, and the AFT has long since been against performance pay. She just laughed and said, “Yeah…yeah.”

This comes on the same day as news that a pro-merit pay group has been paying a small number of teachers to sell the plan to their colleagues, much to the indignation of the AFT, so both sides are playing hardball here.