WASHINGTON—Leaders of the nation’s two largest teachers’ unions found the doors to the Department of
Education locked on Feb. 8 when they tried to deliver “report cards” on Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s first year in office. “We were locked out,” American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten told the Washington Post, after she and National Education Association head Lily Eskelsen García had arrived bearing boxes of more than 80,000 report cards filled out by teachers and paraprofessionals. “We asked for an appointment, but they locked us out instead.” The doors “were closed from about 2 to 3:30 because of the protesters,” a department security captain said. The report cards graded DeVos, a longtime advocate and financier of school-privatization and anti-union efforts, on subjects such as promoting equitable schools, protecting students’ civil rights, and federal aid for schools with low-income students. About 90% of the grades were Fs, the two unions said in a statement, with comments like “systematically eliminating protections for students of color” and “ideologically blinded.” A department spokesperson called the protest “a two-hour political publicity stunt.” Read more
