American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten is scheduled to speak at the upcoming ASU-GSV summit. For 16 years, the conference has been a space for those in edtech to hype their ideas, both good and bad. We have noted a few of these bad ideas from bad actors over the years, to include 2U, Guild, and Ambow Education.
Given Weingarten's track record as President of AFT, we don't expect much from her in terms of speaking truth to power. There are many people in edtech that Weingarten should criticize at the summit. But she is too much of a politician to do such a thing when it is needed.
Weingarten has been the President of AFT since 2008, a union with about 1.7 million members across the US. While AFT has had some victories, those victories were won by the rank-and-file and the hard work of AFT organizers, not due to the actions of Weingarten. With numbers that large, AFT could pose as a serious presence at demonstrations in DC and across the nation. They have done that, when they had to, but not when other folks' lives were at stake.
In 2013, while Weingarten was President of AFT, we recommended that the union use its clout to tell teachers' pension programs and state retirement funds from investing in for-profit colleges like Corinthian Colleges, Education Management Corporation, ITT Tech, and the University of Phoenix. They refused. We have not forgotten how AFT was unwilling to defend consumers, student debtors, and retirees.
Since that time, AFT has done little to defend folks against subprime robocolleges and online program managers like 2U and Academic Partnerships/Risepoint when they certainly needed to call them out. And now their ranks are full of educators and administrators with marginal online degrees.
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