When Barack Obama was in office he pushed a “race to the top” education agenda.
But the truth is when it comes to education, Democrats are chronically speeding toward new lows.
Now a nasty catfight just broke out between Lori Lightfoot and Randi Weingarten over what’s happened to America’s kids.
Back in 2020, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president Randi Weingarten emerged as one of the most powerful figures in the United States.
While American parents were desperately trying to figure out how to manage their children’s academic workloads over zoom—and simultaneously working from home themselves—Weingarten was busy meddling with the government’s pandemic policies.
Now outgoing Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is calling out Weingarten the union leader’s outlandish claims.
Conservatives in Chicago are still trying to wrap their minds around the fact that they’ve reached a point in this country where Lightfoot—a walking definition of what it is to be an unhinged leftist—is the one pointing out bad behavior from someone on the left.
Typically, Lightfoot’s shenanigans are about as bad as things are going to get.
The real scandal of so many failing schools
But Weingarten has been trying to explain away the aftermath as school children’s test scores continue to illustrate the long-term damage caused by shutting down the country for months at a time.
Her strategy seems to be pretending she didn’t do what she obviously did.
CNN set up the brawl between the two ladies with Poppy Harlow playing a clip of Weingarten claiming she “spent every day from February [2021] on trying to get schools open.”
As much as it pained her to side with former Trump Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos who classified Weingarten’s line as “revisionist history”, the fight was far too bitter for Lightfoot to give the union president a pass.
Lightfoot points the finger back
“That may have been what Randi was saying at the national level and I believe that to be true. I had conversations with her at the time that lead me to believe that’s what she wanted to do,” Lightfoot wavered before getting down to brass tacks. “That’s not the reality that was happening on the ground in cities like Chicago, like Los Angeles, and other places. We needed to get our kids back in school.”
Ironically, even though Weingarten heads a relatively small union claiming to represent some 1.7 million teachers – compared to some 12.5 million workers claimed by AFL-CIO union bosses – Weingarten gets a lot of what she wants.
That’s because a sizable chunk of public school workers under AFT control have months of free time during the critical summer political campaigning months.
Some are all-to-willing to work on politicians’ campaigns if it means getting more taxpayer dollars heading into their pockets and union bosses’ coffers.
But with tens of millions of American children in failing schools, some say that raises questions about motivations.
Stay tuned to Blue State Blues for any updates to this ongoing story.
