Bill De Blasio, presumably the next mayor of New York City, is already considering a new schools chancellor: Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers. Weingarten was previously the head of the United Federation of Teachers in New York. According to the New York Post, a source says, “She wants the job and de Blasio’s people have been making calls, asking about Weingarten and testing the reaction.”
The teachers unions in New York City has historically stood in the way of better education for students, creating byzantine regulations designed to protect teachers from poor results. Weingarten has been at the forefront of that movement, saying that teacher seniority, for example, is “the best mechanism we have. You have cronyism and corruption and discrimination issues.” Of course, seniority simply grants teachers the right to teach for life once they’ve survived long enough, rather than allowing the best teachers to rise to the top.
Weingarten earns well over $425,000 per year as a union official. One school principal in New York City said when Weingarten ran the UFT in New York, “Randi Weingarten would defend a dead body in the classroom. That’s her job.”
Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013). He is also Editor-in-Chief of TruthRevolt.org. Follow Ben Shapiro on Twitter @benshapiro.
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