Randi Weingarten sounds alarm about Trump moving to eliminate Education Dept: 'Not legal'

The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that Trump officials are mulling executive actions to eliminate the department as part of the Department of Government Efficiency's task to shrink the federal government. 

During an appearance on CNN on Tuesday, president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, said what Trump was doing was illegal, and she expressed concerns about privacy risks involved with the overhaul of the federal agency.

"The move is not legal," Weingarten told host Kate Bolduan. "There are lots of things about the Department of Education that are in statute," she said about funds that go out from the department to low-income families, students with disabilities, English as a second language learners, and to work study programs.

"You're talking about millions of kids. And what that department really does is it actually makes sure that the money goes out and it's not stolen. It is actually used for the intended purposes. Those are the most important functions of the Department of Education," she argued. 

Weingarten denied the agency handled curriculum in schools but served as more of a financial aid office.

The labor leader argued there should be more federal control over education, saying there should be a federal policy helping schools to compete with China. 

She suggested vocational training in schools could be one way to help students and create more American jobs.

"We need federal policy that actually has kids, boys, having more options in high school to do these kinds of things, become technicians and welders and things like that. That's what the federal Department of Education should be doing. That kind of policy to actually grow American jobs."

Weingarten also argued that eliminating the Education Department could create privacy risks.

"Think about both in terms of Treasury and in terms of education, the amount of personal, private financial information that that department has, just like Treasury has all the information of Social Security, all the information about taxes. In the Department of Education, it has so much personal information for people. So the question is, why is an unelected person taking this private information from people who have trusted the Department of Education to give them their financial information? That, to me, is the scariest thing," she said.

"Nobody elected Donald Trump or Elon Musk to take their private information," Weingarten warned.

The latest data from the Education Department also shows that American students' reading skills have continued to decline since the COVID-19 pandemic. 

"Today's NAEP results reveal a heartbreaking reality for American students and confirm our worst fears: not only did most students not recover from pandemic-related learning loss, but those students who were the most behind and needed the most support have fallen even further behind," the Department of Education said in a statement. "Despite the billions of dollars that the federal government invests in K-12 education annually, and the approximately $190 billion in federal pandemic funds, our education system continues to fail students across the nation."

Weingarten has previously argued that AFT members are indifferent to the prospect of the Department of Education being abolished.