How’s this for a news lead? “Teachers’ union president Randi Weingarten is plotting a teachers’ strike to shut down schools in Puerto Rico, according to a conversation overheard Friday in the first-class car of an Acela train heading to New York.”
This bit of intelligence comes to us from the Washington Free Beacon, and while it might seem somewhat suspect, Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, didn’t deny her comments. Instead, she chided the paper for eavesdropping.
(Note to Randi: when you’re talking loud enough on your cellphone to be overheard by fellow train passengers, they’re not eavesdropping, you’re being rude.)
Subsequently, she announced the strike on Twitter using the same words she was overheard to use on her train ride. “…on April 25th thousands of teachers will form a human shield around the capitol to protect #PuertoRico’s #publiced,” she tweeted. So now teachers are being told to walk out to oppose reforms while the students that need them fall even farther behind?
Last summer Weingarten insulted millions of students and families when in a speech to her acolytes she thundered against the school-choice movement asserting that it is rooted in 1960s-era racism. Charter schools and vouchers, she declared, “are only slightly more polite cousins of segregation.”
It was a blatant attempt to rewrite history and to smear school reformers and what they have achieved over the last 30 years, and we called on her to apologize. But she was neither apologetic nor even chastened. Her only reaction is to reiterate the ‘truth’ of her noxious statements and attack her critics. So we called on her to resign: “Regardless of whether or not her hate speech was an act of insensitive ignorance, or ruthless political calculation, Weingarten should step down as head of the AFT.”
She didn’t, and now she’s riding the rails cooking up new unethical ways to undermine reform efforts and discredit reformers.
Among the many things Weingarten shared with other first-class Acela passengers was her idea of using the teachers’ strikes in West Virginia and Oklahoma as models for action to fight Puerto Rico’s plans to offer scholarships for private schools and increase the number of charter schools. But, Weingarten cautioned, “We should be careful about the words we use. We never use the word ‘strike’” (Weingarten preferred the term “human shield for the kids” – which is how she characterized the teachers’ strikes over pay in West Virginia and Oklahoma).
Again, quoting the Free Beacon quoting Weingarten:
“Let everyone [i.e. Puerto Rico’s teachers] call in for a personal day so they can’t open schools. Let them call in for a sick day. They’re sick to death about the schools. They’re so anxiety ridden about the schools.” Weingarten said the union’s goal should be “cloaking this in Oklahoma and West Virginia” and asked the unknown person on the other end of the line “Does that concept work?” Weingarten also mentioned working with the “lobbyists we have” on the plan.
The revelations of such unashamed scheming and abuse of authority by the head of the AFT might elicit gasps of surprise from some. But the feelings of most are best expressed by Casablanca’s Captain Louis Renault who was shocked, shocked to find gambling going on in Rick’s Café Américain.
For decades, teachers’ unions have cloaked their true goals by wrapping themselves in one high-minded euphemism or another. They’re either “putting children first,” or “defending public education” or “protecting the poor” or “guarding the Constitution,” when, in fact, what they’re doing is working to consolidate power, preserve the status quo, and generate revenue. For 30 years they’ve fought to block or undermine all efforts to empower parents and create opportunities for learning that might diminish their influence and cut into their constituency – which isn’t kids, but union officials themselves and dues-paying members of the rank and file.
At least the teachers who walked off the off the job in Oklahoma and West Virginia were honest about it. They weren’t acting as human shields for kids; they wanted more money and said so. But Weingarten’s strategic conniving offers no such clarity. She is, by her own admission, trying to use teachers, and their employee benefits arrived at through collective bargaining, as her blunt instrument to block reform. “Call it a personal day, call it a sick day.” Is that supposed to be the point of those benefits, to serve as mobilization tools for organizing a strike?
Weingarten can’t seem to separate the importance of her union’s goals and ensuring children have every opportunity to get a great education. In the past year in particular, she has been on a tear against all things that threaten the AFT, the dues it collects, and her power as its president – she calls charter schools racist; calls charter advocates segregationists; calls 529 scholarships unconstitutional (and racist); and she calls expanded opportunities and innovations outside the parameters of the status quo attacks on public education (and racist). And while it’s one thing to march around the country carrying out a campaign of hysteria and outrageousness, it’s another to conspire to use union members improperly, and perhaps illegally, to organize a strike that has nothing to do with collective bargaining.
Education in Puerto Rico is in crisis, but it’s fighting hard to come back. The governor has shuttered 238 schools – a necessary step given that enrollments have dropped by 40,000 students. And with the adoption of legislation that calls for 10 percent of schools to have charter school pilot programs (which, by the way, will be run independently from the district schools and be out of the reach of Weingarten), and the offering of scholarships that will allow some students to attend private schools, the island is poised to move forward and improve education, the same way similar reforms in Louisiana did following its tragic hurricane and the way courageous lawmakers in other states have. Such efforts in Florida resulted in soaring student achievement among low income students; charters and scholarships in Arizona have had transformative and positive impact on all schools.
But Weingarten wants none of that success for kids as long as there is no union involved. She claims the governor is “imposing chaos and sowing more instability,” he’s “feeding Wall Street vultures,” and has a “perversion of priorities.” And that’s what she said in an official statement. We can only imagine what she says when she thinks no one can hear her.
Jeanne Allen (@JeanneAllen) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is CEO and founder of the Center for Education Reform.
