Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, speaks at a press conference at P.S. 183 at 419 East 66th Street in Manhattan. G.N.Miller/NYPost See more of our coverage in your search results.
Add The New York Post on Google Teachers unions are a bane on American education — including on educators themselves — and a probe of union boss Randi Weingarten might be the straw that breaks the corrupt camel’s back.
The House Committee on Education and Workforce is looking hard at American Federation of Teachers boss Weingarten’s use of union funds to produce her recent book, “Why Fascists Fear Teachers: Public Education and the Future of Democracy.”
Under Reps. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) and Rick Allen (R-Ga.), the committee is following up on Post reporting on dubious transactions uncovered by the Freedom Foundation that amount to hundreds of thousands of AFT dollars spent to help produce the book
Of course, that’s just a fraction of how union higherups profit from members’ dues: Weingarten’s pay is now $470,000 a year, not to mention ample perks.
Maybe she’s worth it — to the union itself, at least: She’s been a Democratic Party powerbroker for decades, using that influence to protect the power of the AFT and its larger ally, the National Education Association.
It’s damning that both unions now push a hard-left agenda, complete with pronoun lunacy and other gender extremism, as well as Israel-bashing and endless Trump derangement — all of it aimed not merely at society as a whole, but at the kids they’re supposed to serve in the schools.
The unions have dominated national K-12 public schooling ever since President Jimmy Carter created the Education Department as their tool in 1977, paying them off for key assistance in winning the White House.
The decades since have seen a massive decline in quality schooling, as union-friendly “experts” waged war on any and all measures of teacher or school effectiveness.
The unions only want to maximize the number of dues-paying members; anything that singles out bad teachers or failed schools is a threat to that goal — as are good schools whose educators aren’t unionized.
Despite decades of pretending otherwise, the unions don’t give a damn about the kids — and the pandemic exposed that truth.
Most notoriously, as the worst, most time-serving public-school teachers were enjoying the so-called work of “remote learning” in COVID’s wake, Randi got the Biden White House to order public-health officials to prolong COVID school closures for over a year after the science showed they were worse than useless: No safety benefits, and a huge disservice to the kids.
All across the country, the stronger the teachers union, the longer the schools stayed closed.
Before and after COVID, too: The stronger the union, the more taxpayers spend — and the less students learn.
New York City spends the most (over $40,000 per kid), but schooling is even worse in Los Angeles and Chicago.
Mississippi is where the education miracles are coming — in New York, the teachers union turned efforts to copy that success into a sick joke.
Change is inevitable, because parents want the best for their kids.
So the rotten schools created by union dominance, and the outrageous waste of public funds, drives families out of pro-union cities and states — and within those states, to non-union alternatives.
In New York City, one in seven public-school students now attends a charter, where the kids regularly outscore and outperform their peers in the regular system — despite charter enrollment being far less white and much less affluent.
At this point, only politics protects teacher-union power — and in a democracy, politics will eventually turn against outfits that now exist purely to feed off the public.
Unless they finally start putting the children first, the teachers unions are headed onto the remainder pile — along with Randi’s unreadable book.
