School choice parents and advocates under attack

Tim Sullivan, Center for Education Reform
Posted 7/27/17

School choice parents and advocates under attack

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School choice parents and advocates under attack

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The opposition to opportunity is out in full force. On July 20, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten crossed the line, calling most forms of school choice “only slightly more polite cousins of segregation” and that we are “hiding a dangerous ideological agenda.”

Weingarten delivered her remarks in a speech in Washington, D.C., to more than 1,400 teachers. Weingarten attacked U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and voiced some controversial opinions about school choice and the Secretary’s efforts to reform education.

Alleging the real pioneers of school choice are “the white politicians who resisted school integration,” she has called upon her constituency — a sizable piece of the largest organized employment workforce in the nation, to join her in a mass-condemnation of education opportunity advocates themselves.

The union leader’s attack on parents and others who support school choice is hateful and should not stand.

If Weingarten’s contempt tells us nothing else it is first that she and defenders of the status quo are scared. Scared that the obelisk of the status quo, which is all they know and rely on, may be cracked — and crumbling. Second: that whoever is loudest wins.

Ignorant of the true nature of school choice policies, misinformed about the real intentions of advocates for opportunity and hesitant to consider welcoming change that could make the future less certain in their own lives, people who look to Weingarten and other union leaders will not investigate claims themselves; they will take her word as gospel and go tell it on the mountain as such. From this, we can learn.

Weingarten may have been taken aback by the reaction her hate speech generated but even now, after it has been made abundantly clear that her words were offensive, she is not apologetic or even chastened.

Her only reaction is to reiterate the ‘truth’ of her noxious statement, as she and her political advisors choose to carefully spin it, and to blame ideological enemies and shadowy conspirators for the criticism she’s receiving.

It is also possible that she was not at all surprised by the reaction and that it was her intention to use race-baiting to blow-up the school choice discussion.

Regardless of whether or not it was an act of insensitive ignorance, or ruthless political calculation, Weingarten should step down as head of the AFT.

We need your help to respond to this assault, clear your names and ours, and correct the record — before history is rewritten in error.

The Center for Education Reform asks that citizens please read our statement and consider lending your support in the form of your own statement, story or commentary as a parent, a teacher, a student — or simply as someone concerned with education as-is. If you can, please consider donating to CER. We’re actively engaging everyone in our network to add to, share and spread this message.