FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 9, 2017
Today’s attack on Education Secretary nominee Betsy DeVos by the president of the American Federation of Teachers was a “partisan rant by the leader of the first national union to endorse the Democratic nominee in the last election, and they lost,” said Jeanne Allen, Founder and CEO of the Center for Education Reform.
AFT President Randi Weingarten accused DeVos, who has played a major role in the expansion of charter schools in her home state of Michigan and in dozens of other states, of being “anti-public-education.”
“But charter schools are public schools, they’re just not the kinds of public schools that the AFT likes,” Allen said. “For the head of an organization that purports to represent teachers by attempting to create fear among them is outrageous and contradictory. She claims that an agenda that promotes school options is anti-public education. The only thing anti-public education is those who oppose educating the public in any way that best suits the needs of its students.”
“That’s what the teachers unions have become — a proverbial straw man against anything except the status quo. Their language and rhetoric should be rebuffed by every American teacher who cares about their classroom and their kids,” Allen concluded.
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