For more than 15 years, Randi Weingarten has been the head of the powerful American Federation of Teachers (AFT) – about half the size of the 3-million-member National Educational Association (NEA), but just as powerful. As lobbying organizations, the AFT and the NEA are indisputably among the most powerful lobbying organizations in America – at every level of government.
While both organizations lean heavily, Weingarten has brought the AFT to an unprecedented level of wokeness in education long before the term became part of the political parlance. According to her critics (this author included), she is a political radical who undermines basic education in favor of indoctrination to a leftwing social agenda.
Weingarten’s supporters see her as an activist in support of teachers’ rights and the broader leftwing social agenda. To the extent that that may be true, it has not been good for millions of students and parents.
Prior to her role as head of the AFT, Weingarten was president of New York City’s United Federation of Teachers (UFT) – an organization known for its radical policies and, ironically, for its racist actions during her tenure. Steeped in the politics of education and leftwing causes, ironically, Weingarten – a lawyer by training — has served only three years as a classroom teacher – and that was over thirty years ago.
It should not be forgotten that as a union leader, Weingarten’s primary concerns are her members – not the students. Her evergreen efforts have been to secure more taxpayers’ money and hire more teachers. She negotiates to ensure that most of any new money is expended for the benefit of the teachers – even if it means a reduction in classroom spending. Even as she fights for more taxpayer money, Weingarten’s AFT negotiates to protect incompetent teachers from being fired … more time away from the classroom for teachers … opposition to standardized testing to confirm student educational quality … social promotion … opposition to charter schools and school choice.
Weingarten has been an advocate of something called “teacher autonomy,” – which is nothing more than a euphemism for “unaccountability” to students and parents. She has been a proponent of the belief that schools hold a superior position to parents not only in education but in socialization and political opinions of students.
Weingarten has been a key figure in pushing highly controversial programs, including President Obama’s Race to the Top Initiative, Common Core – and most recently, promoting a cultural war over race, sex, and gender curriculum content directed at even the youngest school children. Some claim that the latter is the result of Weingarten’s openly gay lifestyle. It is a fair point.
Weingarten has been a major supporter of Critical Race Theory, the 1619 Project, and so-called anti-racist pedagogy – claiming that those projects simply teach “real history.” The outrage among parents and taxpayers rises from a view that these projects teach reverse racism and anti-American history – and deepen racial divide. Contrary to her own claims, Weingarten supports the teaching of a one-sided history.
Weingarten played a key roll in the shutting down of America’s public schools during the Covid-19 Pandemic. She promoted the extended use of virtual learning against complaints from parents and the serious harm it was doing to the children. While she claims she was only “following the science,” she was actually overriding the science. Only more recently are the negative impacts on the children of Weingarten’s politics being more fully revealed and understood?
In terms of the response to the Pandemic, Weingarten played a behind-the-scenes role with both the White House and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in establishing national Covid policy – assuming medical expertise she does not have.
In her more than 30 years as an education official, Weingarten has no obvious initiatives to improve the quality of education for minority students trapped in dysfunctional schools in segregated cities. During her tenure, minority students continue to be denied basic education that can lead to college or career level employment.
That is because the teachers’ unions have been an integral party of the political money machine that takes billions of dollars from the taxpayers and filters millions of dollars to the Democrat political machines that control the failing urban school systems.
Like most union leaders, Weingarten is skilled at feathering her own nest. She is in line for a large pension courtesy of the taxpayers, even though she has not been a government employee for decades. (Remember that mere three years in the classroom). Due to a little known provision, she can claim to be a teacher on leave.
Weingarten is a formidable figure in national politics – aligning with the radical left Democrats. (As you can see in the photo atop this commentary). Her influence, however, has not been beneficial to America’s students or the entire concept of public education. She has not been good for the Republic based on a mutually held culture. She has been one of the wrenches in the gears of public education.
Fortunately, parents are responding … protesting … pushing back. It may be costing Weingarten some of her influence. We can only hope so.
So, there ‘tis.