CSPAN - Washington Journal Randi Weingarten

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May 29, 2025 01:22-02:10 - CSPAN

47:55

Washington Journal Randi Weingarten

Participants

Appearances

jason riley

00:31

linda mcmahon

00:58

pedro echevarria

cspan 02:59

Clips

richard c hoagland

00:13

Callers

willie in california

callers 00:05

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Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		differences.
jason riley ▲ ● ▼		But when it comes to public policy and how the government treats us, treats the population, no, it should not be picking winners and losers based on race or treating people differently based on race.
unidentified		It's been a disaster.
jason riley ▲ ● ▼		Whether the effort was under Jim Crow to elevate whites or the effort was under racial preferences to elevate non-whites.
unidentified		It's been a disaster.
unidentified		You know, people like to say that diversity is our strength in America, but I disagree.
jason riley ▲ ● ▼		Our real strength in this country has been to overcome our racial and ethnic differences and focus on what unites us as a country.
unidentified		That has been the strength of America.
		Jason Riley with his book, The Affirmative Action Myth.
		Sunday night at 8 Eastern on C-SPAN's QA.
		You can listen to QA and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Our first guest of the morning, Randy Weingarten with the American Federation of Teachers.
		She serves as their president here to talk about education policy under the Trump administration.
		Good morning to you.
unidentified		Good morning, Pedro.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What measurable changes have you seen to policy from the beginning of the administration to now?
unidentified		They've just made things harder.
		That's the, I mean, whether it's the, you know, cutting the Department of Education by a thousand cuts.
		I mean, that's why a judge just basically said, you can't actually do your mission if you have no employees.
		Like, everybody wants efficiency.
		I want, everybody wants efficiency.
		My members hate bureaucracy.
		We want efficiency.
		But efficiency and evisceration are totally different.
		So it's that.
		It's the dear colleague letter in the middle of February that basically said, you know, you have to look through a lens about everything you're teaching based upon is it what we believe is, you know, equity or diversity or inclusion, and therefore you can't teach it or you can't have this program.
		And if you do, then we're going to cut all your funding.
		So we sued about that because why would you do that to teachers?
		Like, how do you do that to teachers in the middle of their curriculum?
		If they're answering a question of a child, how do they not answer that question?
		And then if they're teaching about Jim Crow, how do they not teach about Jim Crow?
		So, but in particularly, it's students going to college, and we already have young people feeling like we don't do enough for them, and we don't in terms of their future.
		And so you take the student loan information off the website, you basically send it to debt collectors, you don't let them pay their loans.
		Mohila doesn't answer the phone, the loan servicer, you don't actually make them answer the phone.
		So, and now we see from the Washington Post that virtually, you know, everyone who has a student loan has seen their credit report go down 100 points.
		So when I say that for kids and for teachers, they've just made things harder.
		Like we should get the support to make things, it's hard enough to teach.
		It's hard enough in this environment for kids to learn, particularly, sorry, I asked your producer if I could just have this.
		When we are competing with the phone, it's hard enough to compete with loneliness, anxiety, and the phone.
		The federal government should make, should be a supportive role.
		They don't run schools.
		They should be a supportive role.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You said you hate bureaucracy.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Republicans would say the Department of Education is the epitome of bureaucracy and let the states do it or let other factions do it because they could do it more efficiently than a department in Washington, D.C. Let's put it this way.
unidentified		I was a teacher in New York City and I was the president of the teachers union in New York City for a long time.
		That bureaucracy was terrible.
		And the state, and look, I admire the person who is that chancellor and the head of the New York State Department of Education.
		I mean, look, it took me longer to get my, you know, my provisional certification as a teacher than to get my bar, my certification as a lawyer because of the bureaucracy there.
		So, you know, send it somewhere else that the bureaucracies are better somewhere else.
		The states, you know, we should make bureaucracy more efficient.
		We should.
		It should be more efficient.
		It should be more effective.
		I mean, that point about getting rid of waste and doing more efficiency, everybody wants that.
		But you don't do that with a chain saw, and you don't basically eviscerate things.
		And that's, and unfortunately, what the federal government is supposed to do, they don't run schools, except for the Department of Defense schools, which they run.
		And frankly, the ones that we represent in southern Italy are the best schools, sometimes the best schools in the world, certainly the best schools in the nation.
		That's the only schools that the federal government really runs.
		So the issue really becomes they fill opportunity gaps.
		Like all that money, that federal money, it's to actually help poor kids.
		It's to actually help kids with disabilities.
		It's to help kids who are going in, who are in rural areas, help kids who are going into career tech ed, help kids who are trying to get English language acquisition.
		I love this.
		We've made English the law of the land, and then we cut all the money and all the people who are in the Department of English Language Acquisition.
		How are we going to help kids learn English?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Would you say that the current size and scope of the department is needed, or could there be reductions?
unidentified		Of course there could be.
		Look, I never, I'm a union person.
		I never want people to be fired if they're doing a good job.
		Never.
		I mean, my father was laid off as an engineer when I was growing up.
		He was doing a good job.
		They fired the people who were working in the defense industry.
		I watched the pain and suffering that he went through trying to get another job.
		So, you know, you don't do this thousands of people that you fire.
		But what happens is, of course, it could be better run.
		And of course, there could be more efficiency.
		But frankly, there should be a whole lot more people who are actually supervising Mohila, who is the loan servicer who doesn't answer their phones when somebody is saying, I don't know what my loan payment is this week or this month.
		You've taken it off the website.
		I have to call Mohila.
		I'm on the phone with Mohila for hours and hours, and they won't give me the right information because there's not a person to be found.
		It's all push the buttons.
		So how do you not do that?
		If a parent has a child with disabilities, say, needs a wheelchair, and the district is not doing it.
		The Department of Education, the Office of Civil Rights, is who you go to.
		So if you're that parent, and you can't get somebody on the phone who kind of guides you, what are you going to do?
		You're going to now call a lawyer and spend all that money to try to get the district to do this kind of stuff?
		That's the things that the Department of Education does.
		It's to fill opportunity gaps.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let me invite the viewers into the conversation.
		Democrats 202-748-8000.
		Republicans 202-748-8001.
		And Independents 202-748-8002.
		Randy Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers.
		I want you to listen to a little bit of Linda McMahon from her testimony, spoke about at least her perspective on reducing the amount of bureaucracy, as you described it, and we talked about it at the Education Department and get your response to it.
linda mcmahon ▲ ● ▼		We seek to shrink federal bureaucracy, save taxpayer money, and empower states who best know their local needs to manage education in this country.
		We have reviewed our programs and identified spending that does not fulfill the mandate of trust the American people have placed in President Trump.
		We've reduced a department that was overstaffed by thousands of positions, cut old contracts that were enriching private parties at taxpayer expense, suspended grants for illegal DEI programs, and now we're putting forward a budget request that reduces department funding by more than 15%.
		At the same time, we're working to make American education great again.
		In our conversations with governors, teachers, and parents across the country, we hear calls for accountability and more local control.
		That's our goal, to give parents access to the quality education their kids deserve.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's Randy Weingarten, the education.
		I'm sorry, the Education Secretary.
		You're Andy Weingarten.
		How do you respond to that?
unidentified		Look, I'm still waiting for Linda McMahon, who said she was going to call me.
		We share the, you know, we share a view about career tech ed.
		I still haven't gotten that call.
		Betsy DeVos actually called as soon as she became the superintendent.
		She and I went to a school together.
		We actually saw a civics program in rural Ohio that I taught in New York City, the We the People program, which, by the way, they have now cut.
		You know, something, so Supreme Court, you know, Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts says we need to have more civics.
		We need to do, you know, we need to teach more about the rule of law in school.
		I completely agree.
		We do.
		We really do as a civics teacher.
		So one of the cuts that they made is to the premier civics program that rural red districts and deep blue districts all use, which is the We the People competition.
		So, you know, you can say things publicly, all of what she said, let's cut waste, let's cut bureaucracy, let's move local control.
		All of that we agree with.
		The devil is in the details.
		So let's look at the skinny budget or the budget.
		They say they want to do career tech ed.
		We need to have more pathways for kids.
		It shouldn't just be, you know, college or bust.
		We should actually think about the other kinds of pathways we have for kids from high school, community college on.
		They didn't put one dime into Career Tech Ed.
		They're actually transferring or trying to transfer all the Career Tech Ed programs to the Department of Labor.
		The Department of Labor knows nothing about educating children.
		Pre-apprenticeships yes, the apprenticeship programs that the trades do are fantastic.
		We need to do that for advanced manufacturing, for culinary, for health care.
		Not a dime in there.
		Not a word about that.
		Number two, Title I. Title I is the premier program.
		Sorry for being so factual.
		Title I is a premier program started by Lyndon Johnson in the aftermath of Brown versus Board of Education to help lift up all kids from poverty.
		They have cut that program by about $5 billion.
		That program disproportionately serves red states.
		Mississippi gets about 20% of its funding from Title I, New York about 7%.
		What does Title I go for?
		And why does it go as a per-child allocation?
		For reading instruction, for lowering class size, for summer school, for after school, for computers.
		They've cut that.
		And then they want to give the rest of it to the states as opposed to directly to schools for kids.
		So I can go on and on and on about that budget.
		They cut All of the grants that after Uvalde, the grants that went to schools for trying to deal with all these issues that Republicans often say, this is an emotional distress issue.
		These grants went for those reasons.
		They cut them.
		They cut grants to actually improve ventilation programs.
		The big issue in COVID was we need to make sure schools that are 50, 60, 70, 80 years old have good ventilation.
		They cut those programs.
		So the devil is in the details.
		You know, let's actually then work together with kids, with parents, with teachers about what should stay and what shouldn't stay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, we've set aside, by the way, for educators and students, if you want to call in too, 2027 40-8003.
unidentified		Can I, Pedro?
		Can I just say, when you said that about educators, can I just say to educators before we start the calls, just thank you.
		They are doing Yumin's work.
		Whether they're in a public school or a private school, educators are really the people who have the future in their hands with parents.
		And if Linda McBannon is listening, support them.
		Don't make it harder.
		And for students, thank you for being in school.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		And in New York State, Democrats line, you'll start us off.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I just really want to thank you, Randy.
		I am a proud retiree from New York State public schools.
		I have a 35-year career, and it was really a great career.
		And I don't think the average person understands what it entails, what entails in educating a child.
		Public schools don't have the luxury like private schools to say, you have too many physical disabilities.
		You are too poverty stricken.
		You have behavior issues.
		We can't educate you.
		So really, this voucher system is basically yet another wealth transfer.
		Also, talking about student loans, it should be a no-brainer that anyone who becomes certified as a public school teacher and works in public education for a certain number of years, especially the high-needs schools, should have their loans forgiven.
		Thank you so much.
		So first off, thank you for teaching.
		And, you know, I hear this, Petro, all the time.
		You know, that the statistics are, you know, teaching is a really hard job.
		And a lot of people leave in the first seven years.
		If somebody stays for about seven years, they'll stay for their career.
		And, you know, teachers who, you know, you end up having a sixth sense.
		Your job as a teacher is to create a safe and welcoming environment.
		You want to try to create a curriculum that is engaging and relevant.
		And you do it despite all the things that are thrown at you.
		You know, I noticed that one of the things that Linda McBann didn't say is that there's too much paperwork and there's too much testing in schools.
		And they didn't say that they were going to deal with that or cut those kind of things.
		But so teachers like our caller right now, you know, they don't ask for much.
		They just want support and they want the materials and resources to do their job.
		So thank you very much, this particular teacher who didn't give us her name from New York.
		And the last thing I'll say is the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, which was a Bush program sponsored by Kennedy and Hillary Clinton in the Senate, but a Bush program, basically said that if you teach or if you nurse or if you're in the Army for 10 years and you pay your student loans for 10 years, then the rest of them are getting forgiven.
		Even that program is, I mean, it's law, it's statute, it's not regulation, it can't be on the chopping block.
		You know, the Congress passed it, but even that program is on the chopping.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Another resident of New York State.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is Charles and Syracuse, Republican line.
unidentified		So, another guest here, I love calling in when you have people like Jeron, Randy on.
		She wants everything to go through the federal government because then you only have to win one election.
		You don't have to win 50.
		You want the federal government to take care of everything and have parents do what?
		And my final comment is: you mentioned Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat who is credited for passing the Civil Rights Act.
		He said the reason he wanted the Civil Rights Act passed and Democrats to do it was those N-word gotta vote.
		I'll have them voting Democrat for the next 200 years.
		So, I'm not surprised that Lyndon Johnson is one of your heroes.
		You're a disgrace.
		So, my friend, let me just say this.
		I just wrote a book and I have lifted up Lyndon Johnson.
		I did a bunch of research on it.
		Lyndon Johnson was a school teacher before he was a politician.
		He taught in rural Texas, and he taught kids, mostly Mexican-American kids, who didn't have, who went to school without shoes.
		And he basically understood that if you actually created ways in which the federal government can supplement what states do and what localities do, because this locality couldn't afford what the kids needed, that would be a good thing.
		So, let me just say to you, my friend, I want local control.
		The federal government actually does is what the federal government does is a supplement.
		And I think that local control and local elections are really, really important.
		I don't want the federal government to control everything.
		And I obviously was a bad teacher in this back and forth with Pedro because I didn't say any of the things that you thought I said.
		So, the question I have is: what is it about what I am saying that you're not hearing from me?
		Because then I need to change my language to make sure you hear it.
		You may still disagree with me, but I don't disagree about locals controlling schools.
		And I don't think this should be electoral.
		I think this should be about what we do for our kids.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You mentioned this lawsuit that came down stopping at least the attempts to stop layoffs at the Education Department.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Is this the end of the situation, or it goes further from here?
unidentified		And this lawsuit was about stopping the dismantlement of the Education Department.
		And the court was our lawsuit helped by the fabulous lawyers at Democracy Forward and the AGs.
		And this was a lawsuit in Massachusetts with several school districts.
		And it essentially, we essentially said, Congress, this is your job.
		The Department of Education, you know, and the Trump administration can't basically proclaim that they are dismantling the Department of Education.
		If you want to dismantle it, that's your job.
		You created it, but you can't make it null and void.
		You can't basically eviscerate it.
		And the judge said, yeah, you're right.
		It's a separation of powers thing.
		Like, there's three branches of government: the courts, the Congress, and the president.
		And the founders, who really, really, really didn't want a king to emerge as president, the founders basically said, we have to split up power.
		So if the Congress passes it, the Congress is the only one who can pull it back, yank it back, not the president.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		But this doesn't end it, though.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Why do you think that is?
unidentified		It doesn't end it because under the federal court system, again, I'm sorry that I'm being such a social studies teacher.
		Sorry, I'm being so yarmish here.
		But the first court, the trial court, is the district court.
		The district court judge said, enjoined the actions, preliminary injunction, enjoined the action.
		So there's an injunction, and then there's, you know, there's the work on the merits, but basically the court said, it really can't do this.
		Stop it.
		That immediately goes up to the appellate division of the appeals court.
		And given what the Supreme Court has done recently with their very expedited shadow docket, our anticipation is because this was a challenge of an executive order, then the Trump administration is going to want to get it up to the Supreme Court as quickly as possible, particularly on the immediate action of stopping it.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Randy Weingarten, our guest from the American Federation of Teachers, she serves as their president.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Andrew in Texas, Democrats line.
unidentified		Hi, good morning, Pedro, and thank you, Ms. Weingarten, for being on this morning.
		Andrew, just call me Randy, not Ms. Weingarten.
		Okay, Randy.
		Thank you.
		Sorry about that.
		No problem.
		I'm an educator here in Texas, and I would like to say that I believe that the impact that the Trump administration will have on public education, unfortunately, will be a negative impact.
		We're already seeing here in the state of Texas that things are starting to take an ideological turn, the attitude of the state government towards its education.
		They're trying to pass a bill in the Texas State House to require every classroom to display the Ten Commandments.
		We're also seeing in Congress that in the United States Congress that they're trying to pass the big beautiful bill, which is, you know, basically has so many things in it and so many things that are saying, well, it's not cuts, but it actually is cuts.
		And I'm really, really concerned that that's going to happen with education here.
		I work at a Title I school.
		I have students that have special needs.
		I have one student that's in a wheelchair that has an aide with him.
		And I'm really concerned that if the Department of Education is dissolved and that as they're saying, okay, then these funds are all going to be kicked to the states, that the state's going to decide, well, we want to use these funds somewhere else.
		So I was hoping, Randy, that you could comment on that.
		Thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Andrew in Texas, thank you.
unidentified		So, Andrew, look, again, this is why I said to Pedro at the beginning when he asked me the question about what has the Trump administration done, it's just made things harder.
		So listen to Andrew.
		If that child who has a wheelchair and an aide doesn't have the aid anymore, what's going to happen to their child?
		What's the effect on that child, that child's parents, and that child's teacher?
		That aid really helps the child.
		If there's no aid in the classroom, what is the teacher who's teaching also 20 other people going 20 other children going to do, or 30 other children going to do?
		These are the real life things that teachers are going through.
		So what Andrew was talking about is that for the last two sessions in Texas, basically rural educators who understand that they want their public schools and there's not going to be a private school competitor.
		They're just going to lose money.
		There's no private schools in rural areas.
		They're just going to lose the money that goes to vouchers.
		So rural educators and urban educators, rural Republicans and urban Democrats actually joined together to stop vouchers in Texas five times last session.
		Then some rich billionaires got in, got rid of all those, basically all those rural educators, got them out.
		This time, rural educators and urban educators joined again together, and Donald Trump got on the phone with them and said to the rural educators, if you vote against the voucher bill, I will go and find a way to get you out of office.
		So that voucher bill that he's talking about passed in Texas.
		And what we see in Arizona and in Florida, where this similar kind of bill passed, it's just a funnel of money out of the public school system.
		So, and basically, Arizona and Florida actually have seen the funding of their public schools because the money has basically gone to 70% of the money.
		We've seen this in data now, goes to people who already have their kids in private schools.
		And that's what he's worried about.
		The second thing he's worried about is when he talks about reconciliation, there's a lot of reconciliation has been the bill that passed the Congress last week.
		Basically, people have talked about the tax breaks that billionaires have gotten or tax, you know, or no taxes on tips or no taxes on overtime.
		Let me just say, we should have a working class tax break.
		Instead of just having a billionaire tax break, let's have a working class tax break.
		And let's do something that, frankly, the patriotic millionaires have done, which is let's have a cost of living tax exemption.
		Let's do that for the working class.
		Let's do that.
		That should be, if we're going to do tax breaks, let's do a new tax break like that.
		That's what we would be for.
		But on reconciliation and things like that, what they did to pay for it was they heightened the debt by about $6 trillion.
		And they basically have cut two essential programs for kids.
		One is Medicaid.
		A third of kids get their medical care and attention through Medicaid and through CHIPS and through these things.
		That's been cut by about $800 billion.
		And the whole nutrition program is so completely revamped that we are very concerned.
		It's been cut hugely.
		We are very concerned that we're no longer going to be able to provide meals in schools or meals to families.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Denise.
		Denise joins us from Maine, Republican line.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Good morning.
		And I'm so glad, Randy, that you're on here because I've been wanting to say several things to you.
		You have done more to ruin my grandchildren's education than any other person in the world.
		You have lowered standards.
		I have eight grandchildren.
		Four are in school in Florida, four are in school in New Jersey.
		You keep teachers, child molesters on the books because they're not allowed to be fired.
		So that means that the local school boards have to keep them paying.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Sorry, you're going to have to stop listening to the television and finish your thought, please.
unidentified		Sorry, I meant to shut it off.
		I apologize.
		Okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead and finish.
unidentified		I am just so angry with you.
unidentified		You're nothing but a Democratic.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		I have to watch the language, too.
		So you made several points there.
		We'll let our guests respond to it.
unidentified		So first off, I'm sorry that you feel that way.
		I've been in education, I don't know, I think my whole adult life.
		And so let me just say that when I was the president of the teachers union in New York City, we actually negotiated a revamping of tenure so it could not be used as an excuse for managers not to manage or to provide lifetime employment if somebody was not qualified.
		It just, and I agree with you, if somebody can't teach, they shouldn't be there.
		But what they should get is due process.
		That's really, and so, you know, if there are problems and if there are people who shouldn't be teaching, then we should really be dealing with that because most of the teachers in the United States of America are amazing people and some need more support and most are, and frankly in Florida right now, they're yearly contracts.
		So I'm surprised that that's the issue in terms of Florida.
		So that's number one.
		Number two, you know, we may differ in terms of opinions about what to teach or how to teach or whatever, but in a million years, you know, you're, I'm wondering why we have had this, why we have created this kind of divisiveness and this kind of anger at each other when we may disagree on political party or disagree on these kind of things.
		So if there are issues that you have in your local schools, which local schools run, frankly, my union is not actually the dominant union in New Jersey.
		But let's talk about it.
		If there's things that we can do in terms of your local schools that we can help your grandchildren, we want to do that.
		And so the real question becomes, how do I help facilitate conversations with a local school board, with a local union, so that you feel like your kids are getting a decent education?
		That's my job, and that's what I want to do.
		So I don't know how we do that, Pedro, in terms of this, but if there are real issues that I can help facilitate, because I don't run any of these school districts and I don't run any of these schools, but if there's things that our local unions can help facilitate, let's try and do that, Richard.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		It was former staffer Rah Emanuel recently writing a column on education in the Washington Post.
		He said this, my real point is we're facing a sputnik moment in education.
		Almost no one among the nation's purported adults seemed to want to solve the problem.
		Democrats can't be the party that believes in equity as a core principle while simultaneously being complacent about math scores still languishing below pre-pandemic levels and reading scores hitting their lowest in more than 30 years.
		We need to shape up real fast.
		What do you think of that assessment?
unidentified		So look, I agree with Rahm that they should have a Sputnik moment, but when he was mayor of the city of Chicago, he actually closed 50 schools.
		And he actually, you know, instead of doing the kinds of things that he's talking about now, I understand he's going to run for president.
		What is that sputnium moment?
		How do we do that?
		Why are test scores where they are right now?
		Take Florida, which has done all the things that President Trump, you know, they look at Florida.
		That's all the things that President Trump values.
		Their NAPE scores went down more than any others.
		So what is really going on?
		Like if you don't understand the question, like if you don't understand the what, then you can't figure out the why and the how.
		So what we think, as we've been looking at this, is that kids don't read anymore.
		We don't, there's no, there's a sense that, you know, post-COVID that you have to go to school, but you don't really have to go to school.
		COVID really broke us all.
		I think it really broke us all.
		So the real question becomes for schools to get to that Sputnik moment, you got to make sure that kids are engaged, that they feel like school is important to them.
		So, and that, again, I'm going to look at this.
		We are competing with this.
		We're competing with the phone.
		We are competing with social media.
		So, how do we make schools engaging?
		How do we make schools relevant?
		What do we do to create the kind of problem-solving and critical thinking and resilience and relationship building that we know kids need to succeed in life?
		Project-based learning.
		That would create the Sputnik moment.
		Remember, there used to be a Westinghouse scholarship and competition across the country.
		There used to be civics competitions across the country.
		We don't do any of that stuff anymore.
		Those things are now viewed as, oh, they're too expensive.
		Let's actually, if you want to create the Sputnik moment, let's have project-based instruction.
		But not just for the smarty pants.
		Let's do it for the rural kid in New Lexington, Ohio, who somebody says, oh, you know, we're never going to give them it.
		Yes, give them a chance.
		Have them do advanced manufacturing like Chase Dumont is doing right now.
		Watch them soar.
		So let's actually do the Sputnik moment.
		But you do project-based instruction.
		You do things that kids really want.
		You actually stop for a second, fixating on the test scores and fixate on what kids need and what they want and creating a safe and welcoming environment.
		So I'd be happy to talk to Rom, but when he was in charge, he didn't do so well.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's go to George.
		George is in Kentucky.
		Democrats line.
		George, you're on.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Okay.
		Nice to talk to you, Randy.
		And you don't deserve the verbal attacks you've had against you today at all.
		I believe this.
		Kids in dirt poor areas of a lot of large municipalities, especially really don't get a fair chance at all.
		And we don't, what we need, we need to fund our public schools, not by property taxes, but by all a general fund where it goes equally to each district, and we don't do that at all.
		The way we do it, it's almost like giving the Super Bowl winners the first-round draft pick.
		But other than that, the GLP, the upper brass of the GLP for probably a century or more, they just literally ideologically do not believe in public sector functions to help people.
		They believe the only role, basically a lot of them, they'll never come out and admit it.
		They believe the only role for our government, or we the people government, is military and police.
		They want to run everything like a business, like a for-profit business, and they want to privatize absolutely everything.
		So one of their methods of getting this goal is to foment distrust, disbelief, lack of faith in various areas of influence like journalism, academia, school science and health,
		and the media, and to make the public, they want to make things to where they cannot work so they can foment distrust because their goal is to completely abolish or eliminate the public sector altogether if they could.
		They want to privatize absolutely everything.
		And that was part of Newt Gingrich's, I call it the contract on America.
		And after they started privatizing, taking public money out of public funding, tuition rates absolutely skyrocketed.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Gotcha.
unidentified		Thanks.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		George, thank you, thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		So I apologize.
unidentified		So let me just say, first off, thank you.
		But look, I was saying to Pedro before the show started that we don't do enough of talking with people who disagree with us.
		And so part of what you learn as a school teacher is when I say create a safe and welcoming environment, you have to create an environment where people feel like people with each other, regardless of what their ideological bent is.
		And in some ways, that's what pluralism means.
		That's why, you know, when I talk about and think about pluralism, why public schooling is so important.
		It becomes a public square.
		And no teacher I know looks at the registration of their kids' parents to decide where they're going to sit or what they're going to do or things like that.
		And we have to have the muscle to do more of that.
		So I appreciate what you said, but I also appreciate the show and people calling me names and whatever.
		But let me just say something about Kentucky.
		Kentucky voted for Donald Trump in 2024, but there was a voucher ballot initiative funded by a bunch of people who said that they were about school choice.
		It failed in every county in Kentucky.
		It failed significantly.
		So the voucher initiative failed there and the two other places it was on the ballot.
		But yet in Kentucky, they voted for Donald Trump.
		So what you heard from our caller is that people want their public schools, they want them funded, and regardless of what their particular ideology is, this battle over public schooling and whether or not one has it is frankly much more of a battle of ideologues versus the rest of the people.
		And frankly, I do think he's right that there is a war on knowledge.
		And if I go back to the founders and the framers, and again, I've just spent the year writing a book, so I've spent a bunch of time thinking about this war on knowledge.
		Like I've spent a bunch of time answering the question that George said, which is why?
		Like, what is going on here that there is this smearing of teachers, that there is this undermining of public schools?
		Yes, public schools need to be strengthened.
		Yes, we need to do a better job to help every single kid succeed.
		We're not, our goal is every kid, opportunity for all, not opportunity for some.
		So what is going on here?
		And there is this war on knowledge.
		And the framers, the founders, they understood that kids needed to know critical thinking.
		They needed education in order to have a democracy.
		And so this is a fight to have democracy.
		It's a fight for equal opportunity for all kids.
		It's a fight to ensure that every single child can actually discern fact from fiction regardless of what they believe.
		They can actually problem solve.
		They can actually, if they fall down, they can get up and figure out what to do.
		So that's what public schools do when we need the support and the money to do it.
		And it shouldn't be ideological.
		It should be bipartisan.
		And the last thing I'll say is this.
		Before Brown versus Board of Education, it was bipartisan.
		So what happened when we had the Brown case?
		What happened?
		You heard this from a caller.
		Johnson, the civil rights laws.
		It was not about whether you have Democrats versus Republicans.
		It was about whether or not we are helping all kids.
		Are we giving that kid that comes to school without shoes?
		Can we give that kid some shoes?
		I run a charter school.
		I run a charter school in New York City.
		We had to buy a washing machine and a dryer to make sure that we could help our kids have clean clothes.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's go to Mark in Minnesota, Republican line.
unidentified		I had three quick questions for the guest.
		Number one, I believe the general consensus these days is that the school closures due to COVID had a negative impact on educating the children.
		Number two, I'm curious as to what role the guest role the guest played in advocating for the school closures.
		And number three, is the guest a Marxist or a socialist?
		Thank you.
		So number one, my grand, let me answer it in the inverse way.
		Number one, my grandparents, my grandfather, who was in medical school at the time, escaped from pogroms in Russia and in Ukraine.
		And every time somebody actually calls me a Marxist, I think about my grandfather and that he would be rolling in his grave.
		So that's number one.
		Please give me a break.
		I am a person who believes in opportunity for all and dignity for all, and I fight for it every single day of the week.
		And I am actually a progressive capitalist.
		So that's who I am.
		Number two, I believe that COVID closures did hurt kids, and I have said that over and over again.
		And in April of 2020, we were the first ones to actually put out a report about how to reopen schools and reopen them safely and try to make schools the priority.
		Not, look, I understand why bars and why the economics had to be a priority, but we wanted schools to be a priority.
		And so, you know, regardless of whether people put words in my mouth or not, if you look at the evidence, we actually tried.
		What we wanted to do, and nobody knew very much about anything, is we wanted people to be safe.
		We wanted our kids to be safe.
		We wanted their families to be safe.
		And we wanted teachers to be safe.
		But literally, we believe in public schooling.
		We believe that they should have been open, you know, far earlier than they were and that they should have been a priority.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Did AFT advocate for closures initially?
unidentified		AFT advocated for closures in March, but we were not the first ones to advocate for closures.
		We didn't know, you know, so we advocated for closures in March when we saw what was going on.
		But by April, we were advocating, by the end of April, we were advocating for schools to be reopened and reopened, but reopened safely.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You hinted on it and talked about it a little bit, but the administration and this administration, what do you think their emphasis is for school vouchers, even as seen as the recently passed House bill?
unidentified		I mean, they just want school aid to be a piggy bank for vouchers.
		They don't actually have an education.
		I mean, they don't have an education policy other than take money from the public schools and give it to private schooling or give it to religious schooling.
		I mean, the other, the caller from, you know, Texas was talking about the issues of the Ten Commandments in Texas.
		And look, I'm, spoiler alert, you know, I'm married to a rabbi.
		I'm a pretty, I mean, I'm not, you know, I'm not an Orthodox Jew, but, you know, I'm a, I love going to, I love celebrating Shabbos.
		I love going to Shul on Friday nights.
		I'm, you know, pretty observant in that way.
		Our Constitution Has in some ways enabled more church-going people in the United States than almost any other place in the world because of two clauses: the free exercise clause and that the state will not establish a religion.
		And so, when you put the First Amendment, when you put the Ten Commandments in a classroom, you're basically establishing a religion, and it's basically creating a division and saying that one religion or two religions, Judo Christianity, is preferred over everything else.
		That's a clear violation of both the ethos of our founders and the reason and the plain words.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Don in Oregon, good morning, Independent Line.
unidentified		Yes, I've been waiting for a while.
willie in california ▲ ● ▼		I was educated back in the 60s and early 70s.
unidentified		And in those days, you've got basically a free education, even into college.
		I got my college degree in 1971, and I didn't pay a single penny of tuition.
		Yet, by the time the Department of Education was established 10 years later, the cost of education skyrocketed.
		I hate to say it, but I was a farmer.
		My father was a farmhand, and my grades were horrible.
		But I ended up getting a good education for very little money.
		And I just wanted to say that, you know, the Department of Education has not really done the job that it was designed to do in 1980.
richard c hoagland ▲ ● ▼		But so, and I can see in kids getting their education, their education is substandard, and it needs to be upgraded.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, thanks, Caller.
unidentified		Look, I don't, I think what you're actually saying, and I don't mean to walk into this controversy, but the federal policy significantly changed in 2000 to have no child left behind.
		And basically, what the Department of Education basically became is a test monitoring agency.
		And then the federal role became much more about testing and accountability as opposed to the supports for children to learn.
		Now, I disagree with the policy from No Child Left Behind and from Race to the Top.
		I disagree with those policies.
		My point about the money and about the funding and about education is a much more basic point, which is every country in the world wants its children, I hope, wants its children to do well.
		And that's the future of your country.
		Your future of your country is not, you know, in what's happening today, it's in what's happening tomorrow.
		So, the symbolic emphasis of getting rid of the only department you get rid of is the one that's about the future and the one that's about the kids.
		It doesn't control schools, it just controls the money that goes to schools.
		It's just wrong if you care about the future.
		And that's why, overwhelmingly, people are against the closure of the Department of Education.
		So, it's ironic.
		I've said a lot of negative things about the way in which the department operates over the course of time.
		But there's a difference between throwing out the baby with the bath water and just throwing out the bathwater.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		The website for the American Federation of Teachers is aft.org.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Randy Whitegarden serves as the president.
unidentified		Thanks for your time.
		Thank you.
		C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum involving you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy.
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		Coming up Thursday morning, former acting director of the CDC Dr. Richard Besser will talk about Trump administration actions that impact public health.
		Then Trita Parsi with the Quincy Institute discusses the latest on U.S.-Iran nuclear talks and U.S. efforts to reach a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict.
		C-SPAN's Washington Journal, join in the conversation live at 7 Eastern Thursday morning on C-SPAN.
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		On Thursday, California Democratic Representative Latifa Simon hosts a town hall for constituents.
		Some of the topics are likely to include President Trump's Big Beautiful Bill, which recently passed the House, and potential cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, and veterans' health care and services.

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