The American Federation of Teachers’ annual report became public this week. Union boss Randi Weingarten’s compensation: $546,158 — roughly seven times what the average classroom teacher earns.
For that money, you’d expect the union president to be consumed with one subject: Finding ways to always improve the state of public education. But she isn’t. Instead, here is what the former longtime member of the Democratic National Committee spent the past week shouting about: detention and deportation of illegal aliens, which she called one of the most despicable things the current government does.
Meanwhile, reading scores have declined in 47 of 50 states. And never mind that President Trump’s signature campaign issue was ending Joe Biden’s open borders and mass deportations. Oh, and let’s also note that, thanks to Biden opening the migration spigot, millions of American children went without because the massive influx of illegal migrant children overwhelmed many school districts.
Nearly every state in the country is producing children who read worse than the children before them, and the most powerful figure in American education has chosen immigration enforcement as her cause. Not phonics. Not chronic absenteeism, which is still running far above pre-2020 levels. Not the learning loss from school closures her union fought hardest to extend. Illegal immigration.
And the argument she’s making doesn’t survive its own phrasing. These people, she says, haven’t committed any crimes, work hard, and play by the rules. But entering the country unlawfully is a federal offense. Remaining here without authorization violates the immigration codes Congress passed and presidents signed into law. Whatever sympathy anyone has for individual circumstances the one claim that cannot be made is that someone who crossed outside a port of entry ‘played by the rules.’ The rules are precisely what they broke to get her. A union leader who has spent her career insisting that contracts and procedures are sacred ought to recognize the distinction.
But let’s be clear: this is not really about compassion. Public school funding follows enrollment. Enrollment drives staffing. Staffing drives dues. Dues pay for a $546,000 salary, a political operation, and a seat at the table in every Democratic administration. A smaller illegal population means smaller headcounts in certain districts, which means fewer members, which means less money flowing to the organization Weingarten runs. She is not merely sympathizing with a constituency. She is defending a revenue base, which makes her pleas for migrants worse than pathetic.
That is the honest explanation for why a teachers’ union president has opinions about ICE but no urgency about literacy. Illiteracy numbers cost her nothing. Nobody loses a job over them. Nobody’s dues check bounces because a fourth-grader in Ohio can’t read or understand a paragraph.
Parents figured this out some time ago, which is why school choice keeps winning in states that have put it to a vote and why her union keeps fighting it everywhere. When the product fails and the customers can leave, the only remaining strategy is to prevent them from leaving.
Weingarten was hired to do a real job and given a generous salary for doing it. Forty-seven states’ worth of declining readers suggests it isn’t getting done. But hey, let’s here it for the illegal aliens.
