Earlier to 2021, no status had a common choice for schools. Eleven states have adopted it over the past three years. This is a huge success — and more successes for America’s kids are inevitable. Advocates for school choice praised the powerful teachers unions, who overstepped their roles and sparked a family rebellion.
The teachers unions- prompted school closures harmed students academically, mentally, and physically, with almost no decrease in overall zoonotic transmission or infant mortality. Parents were understandably furious at the public schools, but they were n’t going to sit back and accept their condition.
How did organizations respond to demands for more power? By attacking relatives, of training. No, it was n’t the virus that needed to be defeated. It was you, mom and dad.
Kids who had the temerity to propose that universities should do their jobs were officially smeared by the unions. In Chicago, residence of the world’s next- largest public school system, the local union took to Twitter to vilify those who favored reopening universities:” The push to reopen schools is rooted in discrimination, racism and misogyny”, tweeted the Chicago Teachers Union ( CTU) on Dec. 6, 2020.
A few months later, a union member in California named Damian Harmony would say “hold my beer” to the CTU by smearing parents who wanted schools reopened for their supposed” cynical, pearl- clutching, faux- urgency, ableist, structurally white- supremacist hysteria”. That same month, the United Teachers of Los Angeles union called California’s school reopening plan” a recipe for propagating structural racism”, and its president, Cecily” There’s No Such Thing As Learning Loss” Myart- Cruz, accused “white, wealthy parents” of “driving the push behind a rushed return”.
When the term” white supremacist” was used to refer to those who believed that the white race was superior to other races, such as neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members, I’m old enough to recall. The unions and their allies were now labeling parents as” white supremacists” for the horrible ideation that they wanted their children to attend school.
The smear became a running theme. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, the local union voted to reject the school reopening plan as they endorsed a letter by the Educators of Color Coalition, which claimed that the reopening plan was “rooted in white supremacy norms, values, and culture”.
In addition, 140 Pasco Association of Educators members in Washington state asserted in January 2021 that the” culture of white supremacy and white privilege can be seen in our very own community in regards to the decision to reopen schools in a hybrid format, despite rising cases and spreading community.” The Washington Post even ran a blog post by a union member in New Haven, Connecticut, lambasting the supposed “racist effects of school reopening” and claiming that a” comorbidity is white supremacy”.
Not to be outdone, a member of the Chicago Teachers Union, Mike Friedberg, penned an article asking:” Will We Let’ Nice White Parents ‘ Kill Black and Brown Families”? In his telling, it was” white privileged parents” who wanted schools open while” Black and Latine” parents wanted them closed. In reality, significant numbers of families across the racial and ethnic spectrum desired in-person instruction, despite the fact that white parents were typically more likely than minority parents to be ready to return to in-person instruction.
More than four in ten parents wanted to return to in-person instruction when the Chicago school district conducted a parent survey in March 2021. About three out of ten students who attended campuses that month were primarily black and overwhelmingly Latino, despite the survey’s failure to disclose race or ethnicity.
Ironically, the Friedberg article claimed in several paragraphs that the “learning loss” argument is incredibly flawed and that “remote learning is not a lost cause.” Unquestionably documented, black students ‘ learning loss is also significantly worse.
By the end of the 2020–21 academic year, students in majority-black schools were six months behind in both math and reading, according to McKinsey, while students in majority-white schools were only four months behind in math and three months behind in reading. The union-pushed school closures and remote learning, which are actually supposed to be called remotely learning, were the policy’s that produced racist outcomes, not those supported by parents.
The California Teachers Association ( CTA ) even engaged in spying on parents, conducting what-referred to as opposition research, in the same way that political candidates do with their rivals. A union employee emailed a public school principal for information on” the ideological leaning of groups that are funding the reopen lawsuits,” according to a public records request. She noted that she had heard that the principal had “many details” regarding the Parents Association.
When another union employee in the email exchange realized that they had accidentally used the principal’s work email, they went into damage control mode, asking him to “delete and disregard” the emails. One union employee was more sanguine, however. ” I do n’t think there will be an issue”, she wrote, “unless someone does a record request for his work email”.
The unions ‘ hypocrisy is unrestrained. The Berkeley Federation of Teachers ‘ president, Matt Meyer, was caught on camera taking his own child to an in-person private preschool while the CTA was still fighting tooth and nail to keep schools closed while the CTA was spies on parents who wanted them closed.
The unions conducted even comparative research on parents trying new educational methods during the lockdowns. When the unions closed the schools, groups like Prenda helped parents open new “microschools” in their or other parents ‘ homes, church basements, and anywhere they could find space. The unions sought to sabotage the idea rather than support it.
Prenda was established in 2018 by MIT graduate Kelly Smith, who was inspired by his kids ‘ afternoon coding club experiences to create a network of small schools (typically five to ten students each ) where learning is self-directed with the aid of online resources and an in-person “guide” Prenda received a lot of interest from parents, especially those who wanted to give their kids in-person instruction while limiting their children’s potential exposure, even though schools were closed during the pandemic. Prenda had about one thousand students enrolling in one hundred microschools when it began the year in 2020.
Where parents saw an opportunity, the unions saw a threat. Prenda’s rapid growth sent the unions into a panic. What if Prenda was liked more by the students who left their public schools? What if they did n’t return?
The National Education Association’s strategy was to entice parents to try Prenda right away. To do that, they wrote up two “opposition reports” ( their words ), one on microschools generally and one on Prenda specifically. The opposition report’s warning to union members and their allies:” The Opposition Report has documented widespread support for micro-schools.
The report identified more than 20 additional microschool networks and related organizations, and suggested that their staff and allies get acquainted with a list of anti-microschool talking points developed by the NEA, including that their staff members are” not required to be credentialed,” and that their students “are not held accountable to state standards of learning.” Of course, none of these concerns overshadowed parental concerns about school closures.
Kelly Smith’s personal details, including his home address and a photo of his house, were included in the second opposition report, which specifically addressed Prenda. Prenda and other microschool students who might be exposed to guns, drugs, and unfenced swimming pools are also concerned about the report’s” safety.”
Union-backed organizations like Save Our Schools Arizona used these discussion points to pressure the legislature into regulating Prenda and other microschools. Fortunately, state legislators saw through their absurd and self- serving arguments, and microschools continued to flourish.
The unions ‘ claim that using parents ‘ homes for microschooling was unsafe while they were also making the case that students were unsafe at school during the pandemic was particularly ironic. Apparently, they were n’t safe anywhere.
Friedberg had claimed that he did n’t want to risk the lives of my students, their families, or even my own life by backing schools closings. Not all of his coworkers were as open as he may have been about his fears. Some appeared to have other motivations for working remotely, such as Sarah Chambers of the CTU executive board and Sarah Chambers, area vice president.
How remotely? Thousands of miles, apparently, as she was tweeting from poolside at a resort in Puerto Rico. ” Spending the last day of 2020 poolside”, Chambers wrote from her @sarah4justice Instagram account alongside a selfie of herself lounging by the pool, adding:” We have the whole pool to ourselves”.
Just a few of the egregious union actions that caused a sleeping giant to awaken. For far too long in K- 12 education, the only special interests represented were the employees — the adults — in the system. But now, America’s kids finally have a union of their own: their parents.
The Parent Revolution: Rescuing Your Kids from the Radicals Ruining Our Schools ( Center Street, May 14 ) has been adapted for this excerpt.
