Weingarten Preaches Justice While Her Policies Collapse Public Education

This week, Randi Weingarten—president of the American Federation of Teachers—took to the stage once again to deliver a speech full of emotional language and progressive slogans. With the confidence of someone completely detached from the consequences of her actions, she declared, “You are the community standing in the face of the chaos of this president. And together, we build a future of opportunity and justice for all. Hope over fear. Aspiration over anger. The promise of America—for every American. That’s what we’re fighting for today.”

Her words were meant to inspire, to rally her followers and remind them that their fight is somehow noble, righteous, and necessary. But for millions of American parents, teachers, and students, Weingarten’s speech rang hollow. Not because they don’t believe in hope, aspiration, or opportunity, but because they’ve seen what her version of those words has produced: failing schools, silenced parents, politicized classrooms, and children who cannot read, write, or reason at grade level.

Weingarten has become a symbol of the very system that conservatives across the country are working to dismantle—a system that values ideological conformity over educational achievement, that rewards mediocrity, punishes dissent, and replaces knowledge with activism. Her reign over the AFT has turned what was once a mission to protect teachers into a machine for enforcing far-left orthodoxy in schools.

The facts speak louder than slogans. Over the past several years, U.S. education has declined across every measurable standard. National test scores in math and reading have plummeted. Classrooms are increasingly chaotic and unsafe. Teachers are pressured to follow ideological scripts instead of fostering independent thinking. Students are less prepared than ever to compete in a global economy. Yet Weingarten continues to speak as if she leads a movement of progress.

It is especially galling to hear her invoke the word “justice,” given her central role in one of the greatest educational injustices in American history: the school closures during COVID-19. While private schools and non-union districts returned to in-person instruction in mid-2020, Weingarten’s union lobbied tirelessly to keep public schools closed—ignoring mounting scientific evidence of the harm it was causing to students.

Leaked emails later revealed that the AFT had direct access to CDC guidelines, even helping rewrite them to justify ongoing closures. The consequences were catastrophic. Millions of students, particularly from minority and working-class families, suffered academic, emotional, and psychological setbacks. Some have never recovered. And yet today, Weingarten speaks of “hope over fear” as if she were not one of the architects of that fear.

Meanwhile, parents across America have woken up. They saw what was being taught—or not taught—in their children’s classrooms during lockdowns. They realized that unions like the AFT weren’t just bargaining for salaries or conditions; they were bargaining for ideological control. Parents who questioned critical race theory, radical gender instruction, or explicit materials in libraries were silenced, mocked, or labeled as domestic threats.

Weingarten and her allies have done everything possible to shut those parents out. They oppose curriculum transparency laws. They fight against school choice. They denounce charter schools and voucher programs that would give families an escape route. Because at the end of the day, their power depends on one thing: monopoly. A monopoly over education, over teachers, over students, and over the truth.

And now she speaks of “the promise of America.” But what promise is that? Is it the promise that students will graduate unable to read at an 8th-grade level? Is it the promise that they’ll be told their skin color determines their destiny? That their country was founded in sin and sustained by oppression? That gender is fluid and parents have no say?

The promise of America is not built on identity politics. It’s built on liberty, responsibility, merit, and excellence—values that unions like the AFT have spent years trying to erase from the classroom.

In sharp contrast, President Trump has worked to restore those very principles. Through policies that elevate parents’ rights, defund ideological programs, and promote school choice, Trump has made education a national priority—not as a tool of the state, but as a path to freedom and opportunity. He understands that the solution to a failing system is not more bureaucracy or more funding for corrupt unions—it’s more freedom for families to choose what’s best for their children.

While Weingarten holds rallies, Trump delivers results. Under his administration, efforts are being made to root out radical content in schools, protect teachers who refuse to comply with woke agendas, and reinstate basic academic standards that prepare students for real success. His message is clear: schools must serve families, not political interests.

The idea that Weingarten speaks for “the community” is perhaps the greatest insult of all. Communities are made up of parents, students, and honest teachers—not unelected union executives who manipulate public policy behind closed doors. When she claims to be the moral counterweight to “the chaos” of Trump’s America, what she’s really saying is that freedom is chaos to those who depend on control.

There is nothing moral about lowering standards. Nothing just about hiding materials from parents. Nothing hopeful about teaching children that they are broken or guilty because of their race or ancestry. There is no aspiration in mediocrity, and no justice in producing a generation of Americans who are illiterate, cynical, and dependent on the very institutions that failed them.

The American people are not stupid. They have watched this system collapse. And they are fighting back—not with slogans, but with ballots, with lawsuits, with grassroots movements, and with their feet as they pull their children from union-dominated schools in record numbers.

Weingarten can give all the speeches she wants. But she cannot erase the record. And that record is one of decline, division, and dishonesty. She does not speak for America. She speaks for a political establishment that used schools as a vehicle for power, and now fears what will happen when that power is lost.

The future of American education does not lie in the hands of union bosses who measure progress by how many classrooms they control. It lies with the millions of parents, students, and principled educators who believe that learning should be free from politics, rooted in truth, and aimed at excellence.

America doesn’t need another lecture from Randi Weingarten. America needs schools that work. And under President Trump’s leadership, that vision is finally within reach.