AFT’s Weingarten Announces Blueprint to Stoke Student Learning in Landmark National Education Address

WASHINGTON—AFT President Randi Weingarten addressed 2,000 educators at the union’s TEACH (Together Educating America’s Children) conference today, offering up a detailed blueprint for the future of public education built around safe, welcoming, engaging and relevant schools for all.

In a compelling, wide-ranging keynote, Weingarten rallied members to reflect on a difficult year in the classroom and championed an inclusive, forward-facing vision for teaching and learning that counters the contempt, chaos, cruelty, corruption, closures and cuts emanating from Congress and the White House.

“We know that the route to the American dream goes through our public schools,” Weingarten said. “Public schools are the embodiment of America’s civic values and democratic ideals: that all young people should have opportunities to prepare for life, college, career and citizenship.”

Weingarten directly addressed the breaking news that the Trump administration had caved to pressure and released over $5 billion in K-12 education funding for the next school year: funding that Congress authorized and that schools had already obligated.

"Today, they backed down: our lobbying, our lawsuits, and our advocacy for why these funds matter to kids, it worked." 

Weingarten’s vision to strengthen public education in every community, “red, blue or purple,” includes three foundational strategies that must be resourced and scaled: expanding community schools; deepening reading, writing and oral communication skills; and amping up project-based instruction and experiential learning. National initiatives to foster career and technical education and to develop educators’ skills to harness artificial intelligence are crucial.

“The strategies we’re advocating … are not shiny new objects, they’re just good ideas that help kids succeed. And they need to be scaled and resourced,” she said. 

But the possibility of improving student success is in danger of being ripped away by bad-faith actors smearing teachers, waging culture wars and pushing private school voucher schemes. The underlying reason? “The perpetrators of these attacks fear what we do—the teaching of reason, of critical thinking, of honest history, of pluralism—because their brand of greed, power and privilege cannot survive in a democracy of diverse, educated citizens.”

She said safe and welcoming schools aren’t just a good idea for kids’ well-being; they're essential to success. Schools must be places where students, families and educators are physically secure, supported and accepted—but far too many today do not feel safe, whether because of loneliness, anxiety and depression, gun violence or immigration status.

Engaging and relevant schools mean a focus on project-based instruction and experiential learning to help students learn how to solve problems, analyze and synthesize data, and apply learning to new situations. High-quality CTE is a leading model of experiential learning. Ninety-five percent of students who concentrate in CTE graduate from high school, and 70 percent go to college.

Reading, writing and oral communication are the essential skills students need to succeed in school, as citizens and in the world of work. For a quarter century, the AFT has been advocating for evidence-based reading instruction and putting professional development, publications and partnerships behind it. And, in the last decade, we have given out 10 million books as part of our Reading Opens the World initiative.

Others offer nothing but attacks in return. Weingarten’s upcoming book, Why Fascists Fear Teachers, warns about the dangers of the assaults on knowledge and pluralism and spells out the ways we can fight back to defend critical thinking, opportunity and democracy. It hits bookstores on Sept. 16 through Penguin/Thesis.

Weingarten concluded her speech with a call to action: “We, the educators of America—the future-makers, the freedom lovers—we choose community. We serve and strengthen our communities, and we know that together we can achieve what is impossible to do alone.

“None of us asked for this fight, but fight we must. For our students. For public education. For our colleges. For our communities. For freedom and democracy. For affordability and opportunity. For dignity. For a better life for all.”

TEACH, the AFT’s professional development conference, features high-profile guest speakers over three days, including Sen. Mazie Hirono; Cornelius Minor, educator/coach, The Minor Collective; Rebecca Winthrop, director, Center for Universal Education, Brookings Institution; Chase Dumolt, New Lexington High School (Ohio) graduate and apprentice; and Leslee Udwin, founder and chair, Think Equal.

The conference will offer more than 70 cross-curricular sessions for educators and union leaders, with meaningful tools and resources, solutions to help students learn and opportunities to collaborate with colleagues.

Weingarten’s speech can be read here. TEACH general sessions are streamed live and can be watched back each day on the AFT’s YouTube channel, Facebook page and via aft.org.

To schedule an interview with Weingarten and other AFT officers, email aftpress@aft.org.