CHERNIN: Randi Weingarten’s Latest Op-Ed Isn’t About Students — It’s About Power and Fear

In her recent Fox News op-ed, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten unleashes a hyperventilating attack on Donald Trump’s executive order to dismantle the Department of Education (DOE). Her arguments — thinly veiled in concern for “students” and “equity” — are little more than performative panic designed to protect the political slush fund that has enabled the ideological capture of America’s education system for over three decades.

Let’s be clear: this is not about protecting children or learning outcomes. It’s about safeguarding the taxpayer-funded bureaucracy that props up the teachers unions’ political influence, subsidizes failed progressive experiments, and centralizes control in Washington, far removed from parents and communities. (RELATED: Teachers Union Leader Suggests Without Evidence That Trump Is Pulling Student Funding To Pay ‘Billionaires’) 

WASHINGTON, DC – MARCH 13: President of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten speaks during a rally in front of the Department of Education to protest budget cuts on March 13, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)

Trump’s executive order does not unilaterally abolish the Department of Education — because it legally can’t. Only Congress can eliminate a cabinet-level agency. What the executive order does do is initiate a restructuring and return power to the states, consistent with long-standing conservative principles of local control and constitutional governance.

Weingarten deliberately ignores this nuance because she wants to frame this as a lawless power grab. The real panic here isn’t legal — it’s financial. The DOE has become a bloated, inefficient vehicle for redistributing billions in federal funds, much of it filtered through union-backed initiatives and DEI bureaucracies that have nothing to do with improving education.

Her claim that it will “devastate vulnerable students and special education programs” is the oldest trick in the progressive playbook: scream about hurting the poor and disabled every time federal spending is questioned. But look at the results. Despite historic increases in education spending, reading and math scores have declined or stagnated nationwide, especially in urban areas with the highest per-pupil costs. The problem isn’t a lack of money — it’s how the money is used.

Much of the federal funding she references goes to sustaining layers of non-teaching administrators and progressive social engineering programs rather than directly benefiting students. Trump’s proposal doesn’t cut support for special needs kids — it challenges the inefficiency of a top-down system that hoards dollars in bureaucracy rather than classrooms. (RELATED: ‘I Hear No Remorse’: CNN Contributor Goes Off On Randi Weingarten To Her Face)

Weingarten’s claim about taking money from public schools just to hand it to private school vouchers “for the rich” is deliberately deceptive as well. Vouchers and school choice programs are overwhelmingly popular with working-class and minority families who want an escape hatch from the failing public schools that teachers’ unions like AFT defend at all costs. Weingarten pretends these programs benefit only the wealthy, when in reality, it’s the affluent who already can afford to flee the system. School choice gives poor and middle-class families access to the same freedom.

And let’s not forget: it was Democrat-controlled urban school districts — supported by unions like hers — that kept schools closed the longest during COVID, doing catastrophic harm to low-income students. They lost years of learning while union bosses fought to stay home. Now Weingarten wants us to believe she’s the defender of the underprivileged? Give us a break.

As for using funding as some sort of ideological leverage, it is staggering hypocrisy, even by Weingarten’s own standards. The DOE, under Biden and Obama, routinely used funding as a weapon to impose woke ideology on local school districts. From transgender bathroom mandates to race-based disciplinary policies to critical race theory-infused curricula, federal dollars came with ideological strings attached—often enforced by civil rights divisions weaponized for political ends.

Weingarten never raised concerns about “authoritarianism” when the federal government told schools they would lose funding unless they pushed progressive orthodoxy. Now, suddenly, returning power to states and parents is authoritarian? No, it’s just a threat to her power.

Weingarten’s panic isn’t about legality or education—it’s about the fear that the cash spigot is finally being shut off. The DOE has become a trillion-dollar pipeline of taxpayer funds funneled through bloated programs that reward union allies, push left-wing agendas, and create layers of bureaucrats who answer to D.C., not local parents.

Trump’s move challenges that entire structure. It threatens to decentralize education, empower parents, and force school systems to justify their funding based on results, not political loyalty. That’s why Weingarten is shrieking—because the gravy train that has allowed her union to act as an unelected policymaker for millions of children is on the chopping block.

Weingarten’s op-ed is not an argument. It’s a political tantrum. The DOE is not the guardian of educational equity—it’s the enabler of decades of failure, waste, and ideological overreach. Trump’s decision to dismantle it is not only legal—it’s long overdue. If dismantling a bureaucratic monstrosity that produces poor results and breeds political corruption is “radical,” then it’s the kind of radical America desperately needs.

The only thing that’s truly “illegal and wrong” is forcing taxpayers to fund a partisan educational cartel that’s more interested in indoctrination than instruction. And Weingarten knows it. That’s why she’s scared.

Robert B. Chernin is chairman of the American Center for Education and Knowledge. He is a longtime entrepreneur, business leader, fundraiser, and political confidant, and has consulted on federal and statewide campaigns at the gubernatorial, congressional, senatorial, and presidential levels.