Randi Weingarten kept kids out of school for two years and called it science.
Now she's in Time magazine demanding sympathy for the teachers she claims she's fighting for.
What she's actually collecting from those teachers would end her career if more of them knew.
Randi Weingarten Salary Tops $514,000 While Teachers Pay Her Dues
American Federation of Teachers Union Boss Randi’ Weingarten's Time piece declared that the "teacher pay penalty" has grown to 27 percent and that educators across America are living paycheck to paycheck, taking on debt to buy groceries and cover rent.
What she didn't mention: her own annual compensation sits at $514,488, according to the Illinois Policy Institute's review of AFT filings.
The actual numbers on teacher pay tell a more complete story than Weingarten offers. The nonprofit Just Facts analyzed federal data and found that in the 2021–22 school year, the average public school teacher earned $66,397 in salary plus $34,090 in benefits – total compensation of $100,487.
Full-time public school teachers also work an average of 1,490 hours per year, roughly 37 percent fewer hours than private-sector workers who clock 2,045 hours annually.
Weingarten also claimed that teachers in states with union collective bargaining agreements earn 24 percent more than those without.
Mike Petrilli of the Fordham Institute has found the opposite – that teachers in non-union districts earn approximately 12 percent more than their unionized counterparts. University of California researcher Augustina Pagalayan reached similar conclusions in 2018.
The dues teachers pay to hear Weingarten make these claims run about $1,500 annually in Los Angeles alone.
How AFT Union Dues Paid for Weingarten's Book and Her Friends
Weingarten published Why Fascists Fear Teachers in September 2025 – a book she said would "empower us and give us hope." A Freedom Foundation review of the AFT's most recent federal financial filing, called an LM-2, traced exactly where member dues went to produce it.
The AFT paid nearly $1 million to a New York law firm whose attorney is thanked in the book's acknowledgments.
When the New York Post asked about it, the union claimed the legal work was done pro bono – but the union's own LM-2 filing says otherwise.
Dues also covered $6,000 for fact-checking, $5,212 for a single author photograph, and $64,090 to a literary agency that listed the AFT – not Weingarten – as its client. The AFT also paid collaborator Sally Kohn more than $400,000 in the year leading up to publication – more than triple her typical consulting rate.
Nearly 30 AFT staff members are thanked in the book's acknowledgments. Travel costs for Weingarten's nationwide promotional tour are not separately itemized in the filings.
Teachers paid for nearly all of it. Weingarten may not have contributed a single dollar.
Weingarten Rewrote Her COVID School Closure Record Using Teacher Dues
Every parent in America should know what congressional investigators found about Weingarten's actual record.
The Time piece burnishes her image as a teacher defender. The book does the same work – but in 2023, congressional investigators documented what she was actually doing during the pandemic.
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic obtained emails through a Freedom of Information Act request showing that in February 2021, Weingarten and the AFT were given an advance copy of CDC school reopening guidance and allowed to make line-by-line edits.
Two of the union's language recommendations were adopted nearly verbatim into the final CDC document. The subcommittee further documented that Weingarten held direct phone calls with CDC Director Rochelle Walensky in the days before the guidance was published.
The result: guidance that kept more than 90 percent of U.S. schools from fully reopening – while Florida and other states that had returned to in-person instruction proved the science supported them all along.
In her book, Weingarten writes that she "led the AFT in developing a concrete plan to reopen schools as quickly and safely as possible."
Congress obtained the emails. They say otherwise.
OpenSecrets data shows the AFT gave $3,069,063 – 99.89 percent of its 2024 political donations – to Democrats. The union that claimed to speak for science gave virtually its entire political budget to the party whose officials kept schools locked and kids isolated.
Weingarten has served as AFT president since 2008, and as head of the United Federation of Teachers for 11 years before that. Teachers do not vote for her directly – only union delegates do. The members writing the $1,500 annual dues checks have no direct voice in who leads their union or where their money goes.
The Time op-ed isn't advocacy – it's a fundraising pitch dressed as journalism. Every teacher who reads it and feels validated writes a bigger check to the union cutting Weingarten's $514,488 salary. The book her members financed rewrites the COVID record before the 2026 midterms lock in the accountability narrative.
The 99.89 percent Democrat donation rate explains why no one in Washington with the power to investigate her has bothered. She built a machine that pays her like a CEO, keeps politicians from touching her, and puts classroom teachers out front every time someone asks where the dues went.
The woman writing in Time about teachers who can't afford groceries is a one-percenter living off those same teachers' paychecks – while the federal records she files every year tell the story she won't.
Sources:
- Larry Sand, "Randi Whinegarten," American Greatness, June 23, 2026.
- Maxford Nelsen, Freedom Foundation analysis of AFT LM-2 federal filing, cited in multiple outlets, May 2026.
- House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, "American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten Testifies to Uncommon Influence Over CDC School Reopening Guidance," U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, April 26, 2023.
- Just Facts, teacher compensation analysis, 2021–22 school year data.
- OpenSecrets, AFT political contribution data, 2024 cycle.
- Illinois Policy Institute, AFT compensation review.
