Chicago Teachers Union Chief Rips Teach for America

Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis says the Teach For America group of volunteer teachers helps to “kill and disenfranchise children,” The Daily Caller reports.

“We in Chicago have been the victims of their experiments on our children since the current secretary of Education [Arne Duncan] ‘ran’ CPS [Chicago public schools],” Lewis wrote on the blog of educational policy analyst Diane Ravitch, The Daily Caller reports. Duncan was CEO of Chicago public schools before President Barack Obama named him Education secretary.

Teach For America is a group of “education missionaries” who view their teaching experience as a “stepping stone to a more lucrative career,” Lewis wrote.

She offers no apology for using last week’s school shooting in Newtown, Conn. to help her cause. “There might have been a time where ‘politicizing’ tragic events, especially mass shootings, was thought to be in poor taste,” Lewis said. “That has changed with the 24/7 news cycle that continues to focus far too much time and energy on the perpetrator of the massacre than that of our precious victims.”