Randi Weingarten
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Rhonda "Randi" Weingarten (born December 18, 1957) is an American labor leader, attorney, and educator who has served since 2008 as president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), an affiliate of the AFL–CIO. A former president of New York City’s United Federation of Teachers (UFT), she previously worked as the union’s chief negotiator and counsel and taught social studies at Clara Barton High School. She is widely noted as the first openly gay person elected to lead a national American labor union. As AFT president, Weingarten has been a prominent voice in national debates over K–12 policy, advocating for “bottom-up” school improvement, community schools, and limits on high-stakes testing while supporting accountability measures and selective use of assessments. Her leadership and positions on standardized testing, charter schools, tenure, and educator pensions have drawn both support and criticism from policymakers, advocacy groups, and the press. During her tenure with the UFT, Weingarten oversaw a series of major collective-bargaining agreements in New York City that increased teacher pay while lengthening the workday and workweek, positions that figured prominently in citywide education policy debates of the 2000s.