Randi Weingarten denies comparing 'parental rights' advocates to segregationists during podcast interview

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Randi Weingarten is barking up the wrong tree: Laura Zorc

'Fox News @ Night' panelists Laura Zorc and Debra Tisler discuss American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten attacking GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis for his stance on education. 

American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten sparked outrage after she spoke about the Southern Poverty Law Center comparing 1950s segregationists with modern "parental rights" advocates, but denied agreeing with the assessment herself when contacted by FOX News Digital.

Professor Seth D. Harris, who served under the Biden and Obama administrations, interviewed Weingarten about the state of American education on Tuesday's episode of his "Power at Work Blogcast." After Harris noted how public schools have been "political lightning rods" for decades, ranging from controversies over public funding to racial segregation, he asked Weingarten if there is "something different" about the political battle over schooling in states today. He also asked if Weingarten could suggest a plan to "modulate this new politicization of schools by folks on the right."

Weingarten responded by suggesting the majority of Americans are not outraged about the state of public schools, but there are merely a "small group of extremists" who are "relying on or exacerbating the anxiety that people had post-COVID."

While she blamed the "billionaire conservative class," arguing they never wanted public education in the first place, she went on reference the past backlash after the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling declared racial segregation unconstitutional.

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American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten noted that the Southern Poverty Law Center had shown her parallels between parents advocating "parental rights" and segregationists. (The Burnes Center for Social Change)

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"Those same words that you heard in terms of wanting segregation post-Brown v. Board of Education – those same words you hear today," she said. "I was kind of gobsmacked when I was talking to the Southern Poverty Law Center, and they showed me the same words, ‘choice,’ ‘parental rights,’ and attempt to divide parents versus teachers."

She proceeded to say, "At that point it was White parents versus other parents, but it’s the same kind of words."

Her statements were widely shared online, sparking swift backlash, but when contacted by FOX News Digital, she claimed was not comparing school choice and parental rights activists with segregationists.

"I never made the comparison. I said I was gobsmacked that the same language was used. I was shocked by it precisely because I don’t see today’s parents that way," she claimed to Fox News Digital. "I believe that parents and teachers are each others partners."

However, according to National Review, Weingarten declared during a union convention in 2017 that "the real pioneers of private school choice were the White politicians who resisted school integration." During the same event, she also reportedly referred to school-choice programs as being the "only slightly more polite cousins of segregation."

A 2023 SPLC study compared modern parental rights and school choice movements to the segregationists in the wake of the Brown v. Board ruling, noting that "segregationist parents" side-stepped it "through self-titled ‘school choice’ that made it possible for parents who were allowed to maintain their racist values by sending their children to private Christian academies."

Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers, reacts in front of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. April 26, 2023. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz (REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz)

Harris responded to Weingarten's comments by appearing to imply conservatives contesting school policy on certain cultural issues amounts to "beating up on a trans kid" or "beating up on a Black kid and telling them the history they've learned is not right."

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Weingarten agreed there is "nothing more disgusting" than targeting those particular groups and then objected to claims that conservatives care about all children. 

"If you care about kids, you got to care about all kids," she said.

School choice advocate and senior fellow at the American Federation for Children Corey DeAngelis shredded Weingarten’s rhetoric as not only inaccurate, but a clear sign of desperation.

"You know you've won the ideological battle when your opponent resorts to unfounded smears about racism. We're freeing families from the clutches of the teachers unions once and for all and there's nothing Randi Weingarten can do about it," DeAngelis wrote in a statement to FOX News Digital. "She is desperate and it shows. Good. We're winning this war she waged on parents and their children."

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He then argued that "staunch segregationists locked arms with the teachers unions in the 1950s to oppose private school choice, because they knew it would lead to integration," linking to a piece from the Wall Street Journal, "School Choice’s Antiracist History."

He also noted that similar phenomena continue, noting that "7 out of 8 studies today find that modern school choice programs lead to more integration." DeAngelis concluded by slamming Weingarten’s policy of "trapping poor kids in failing government schools with government force" as the "real segregation."

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Kyle Morris contributed to this report.