AFT president’s personnel file indicates very little experience as a teacher
Earlier this week, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten lashed out at Americans who are trying to improve the nation’s mediocre public education system, mocking them as “a group of self-styled reformers” who “wouldn’t last 10 minutes in a classroom.”
That characterization is interesting, considering Weingarten may have very limited experience as a public school teacher herself.
Weingarten likes to present herself as a battle-tested, former teacher with unquestioned expertise about what does and doesn’t work in K-12 education – including seniority, teacher evaluations and testing procedures.
This is how her official AFT biography reads:
“A teacher of history at Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights from 1991 to 1997, Weingarten helped her students win several state and national awards debating constitutional issues.”
Education Action Group believes that Weingarten may be wildly overstating her teaching credentials.
Earlier this year, EAG submitted a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request with the New York City Department of Education for Rhonda (“Randi”) Weingarten’s employee personnel file.
The file contained only 18 pages of information, most of which involved Weingarten’s employment and education history.
The records can be viewed at PublicSchoolSpending.com.
Under section 14 of her “Personal Data” form, Weingarten notes that she was licensed only as a “Per Diem Teacher” (or substitute teacher) on September 3, 1991.
According to these records, Weingarten received her provisional teaching certificate on September 7, 1993. It is EAG’s understanding that a provisional certificate is given to individuals who have not completed all the requirements necessary to become a fully-licensed classroom teacher. A provisional certificate is given until those requirements are fully met.
On October 8, 1994, New York City Public Schools issued Weingarten a “certificate to serve as a substitute” that reads:
“This certificate is issued for: Preparatory Provisional Service on the basis of having made application for a New York State Temporary License which requires timely progression toward the attainment of New York State Provisional Certification….This Certificate is valid for substitute service in the New York City Public Schools.” (emphasis added)
On July 11, 1997, the New York City Board of Education sent Weingarten a letter stating, “… you did not submit required documentation confirming that you have met the full preparation requirements for licensure (Chancellor’s Requirements) for the above-referenced New York City Regular License….”
In fact, there is no record in her file indicating Weingarten ever served as a full-time teacher at any K-12 public school. This seems to contradict the assertion in Weingarten’s biography that she was a history teacher at Clara Barton High School from 1991 to 1997.
Weingarten, an attorney by trade, was elected president of New York’s United Federation of Teachers in 1998. During her election campaign, her opponent, Michael Shulman, suggested that she was not a “real teacher.”
“She worked five months full-time that I’ve been aware of, in 1992, at Clara Barton High School,” Shulman was quoted as saying in the New York Times. “Since then she taught maybe one class for 40 minutes a day.”
What does this all mean?
First, Weingarten’s classroom experience may be very limited, and thus, her dismissive attitude toward education reformers may be unwarranted and inappropriate.
And nowhere in Weingarten’s personnel file is there any indication that she was ever evaluated by a principal or any type of school official.
In fact, EAG was explicitly told by a NYC Department of Education official that if Weingarten had received any teacher evaluations, they would have been in the personnel file we received.
Yet, Weingarten travels the country speaking authoritatively on the pitfalls of unfair teacher evaluations. Apparently she may not be speaking from experience.
The second conclusion reached from analyzing Weingarten’s work history is that she may have used her teaching job (limited as it may have been) as a stepping stone to becoming a union official. Without some teaching experience, Weingarten would not have been qualified to become AFT president.
Weingarten likes to mock education reformers as a bunch of ignoramuses who couldn’t last 10 minutes in a classroom. But there are questions about the length and depth of her own teaching experience.
It seems that Weingarten is a veteran teacher, only if measured in dog years. It’s time for Weingarten to be challenged about her own work history. Based on the information we’ve seen, she has much more experience as a union leader and attorney than she ever had as a classroom teacher.
Weingarten likes to masquerade as an education expert, but she’s hardly more qualified to speak about education reform than the average parent and taxpayer.
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4 Comments
It seems to me that she is even LESS qualified to speak on education reform than the average parent and taxpayer because she has limited classroom experience AND does not have any children of her own. Therefore, she has no clue what the children of America need for their education.
It helps, for sure, to have a bottom-up perspective and a feeling for how policies work on the ground level, but when people sympathetic to union-endorsed education reform efforts trot out the argument that people like Michelle Rhee or Joel Klein have no business talking about education because they have limited experience with it, I shake my head. It’s more of a distraction than a compelling argument.
So it turns out that Weingarten doesn’t have a lot of experience in the classroom, either. It’s unfortunate if she’s misrepresented her experience. But at the end of the day, this reinforces the uselessness of the argument about how much teaching experience one has and its relationship to your ability to have opinions or qualification to advocate for things.
Weingarten is a smart, capable and passionate person. As is Michelle Rhee. As is [Insert your favorite ed policy celebrity here]. Surely, if people are concerned about Weingarten’s qualifications to speak about education reform because of her “limited classroom experience,” then certainly the more than tw0-decades she’s been involved with AFT teachers has given her that perspective.
Yes, Randi cracked out of turn (nothing new there) but that hardly makes her wrong about the experience (or lack thereof) of the vast majority of educational deformers currently trying to take over US public education. Turning the criticism back on the critic only works if those listening allow themselves to be distracted from the truth of the original point: Arne Duncan, Joel Klein, Michael Bloomberg, Michelle Rhee, Eli Broad, Betsy DeVoss, the Walton Family, the Coors Family, and the rest of the Deform crowd have, collectively, exactly the experience of the fewer than five years Michelle Rhee spent teaching.
And as the head of a teachers’ union, Weingarten quite obviously is familiar with systems of evaluating teachers. To suggest that she personally had to be evaluated is a prerequisite for knowing the facts about a HOST of such evaluations and complaints by and to the union as a result of either teacher or district complaints is ridiculous. But if we’re going to go in that direction, let’s look at the number of principals from the Eli Broad Academy who have minimal or no teaching experience who then are the ones doing those evaluations. Think that might be a problem? Or the folks who spend maybe two years in classrooms via the narrow lens of Teach For America and then go into education policy making. Problem?
Seems to me the bottom line is this: are the policies the deform folks advocate for good or not? Are Randi Weingarten’s criticisms valid or not? The rest is just distraction. And in the clever game being played with public education, distraction from reality is a drug on the market.
I guess integrity doesn’t count for jack these days. Yet again, another example of liberals believing the end justifies the means. She lied. She’s misrepresented herself. Those things alone, regardless of time as AFT president disqualifies her.
If she had just been honest that would be one thing, but she wasn’t. Makes you wonder what else she’s lied about. But then again, liberals could care less. If I were a member of AFT I would certainly want the president of my union to have actually been a working teacher – the longer the better. I would want her/him to be honest and have integrity. Sounds to me she just wants a secure job. Well, they gave it to her. Thank God for right-to-work states. Liberals and unions don’t get it and never will. Their total disregard for the public contributes to the public’s disdain for teachers. This is the kind of thing that contributes to that disdain. But they’ll barge on as if nothing happened and nothing to see. Cause after all, the public is just too stupid to understand how education works.
(I am a h.s. teacher in an alternative school)