Posted on 12/30/2020 9:38:03 AM PST by Kaslin
As an adult who teaches, I got to choose an open school. Union politics have now barred millions of families from a similar privilege.
I don’t blame schools for closing in March. Very little was known about COVID-19 then, so closures seemed the safest decision amid the uncertainty.
Neither do I blame schools for a meager showing that semester. My own district threw together online curricula and instructional materials practically overnight. The results were dismal, but it’s the best many could have done given the situation.
However, we’ve now had nine months to understand this virus, and all the evidence favors returning to in-person instruction. Studies have found that schools are not in fact the “super spreaders” many feared. Dr. Anthony Fauci himself has said to “close the bars and keep the schools open.”
Perhaps some schools in hot-spots ought to close, but they should do so for genuine safety concerns, not fear of consequences at the next election. Citing the social, emotional, and academic benefits of in-person learning, The American Association of Pediatrics “strongly advocates” for open schools everywhere possible.
Nonetheless, the majority of our nation’s children have spent the last nine months staring at a computer screen at home, clicking through homework links or simply opting to not show up. One institution bears significant guilt for this state of affairs: teacher’s unions.
Cato Institute researcher Corey DeAngelis crunched the numbers and confirmed what many suspected: school closures had more to do with union power than pandemic concerns. When he reviewed the decisions that various districts and schools made to open or close, he found that the data correlated more closely with the strength of policies favorable to unions than to case counts and deaths.
The politics get more ludicrous. Unions have protested when school officials set open dates. While discussing school openings, the Los Angeles teachers union also demanded a wealth tax and Medicare for All. A number of unions banded together with the Socialists of America on a resolution to “demand safe schools,” only to eschew discussions of safe openings to instead decry charter schools and suggest cancellation of rent.
At the end of last semester, I decided to change districts to one that would open. Some of my students have had to quarantine. However, with masks, social distancing, and hand sanitizer, we’ve had no local spread; we’ve traced our positive cases to external exposures. We’ve had no disastrous outbreak.
Rather, we have spent our year so far discussing books, playing vocabulary games, running football plays at recess, learning subjects and predicates, decorating my room with Christmas lights, and doing everything a school ought to do: promoting socialization, academic development, and mental health.
As an adult, I got to choose an open school. Union politics have now barred millions of families from a similar privilege.
The academic losses are severe. In June, The New York Times reported months’ worth of learning losses because of school closures. Fewer than half of students showed up during that first semester online. While attendance has improved the learning loss continues, especially among poor and minority students.
After a critical response, the Chicago Teachers Union deleted a tweet insinuating that the push to open schools comes from “racism, sexism, and misogyny.” Considering who these learning losses affect most, it’s quite the opposite.
If enrollment numbers are any determinant of public opinion, then school openings appear wildly popular. The superintendent of Boston Catholic Schools reported an increase of 4,000 students after they made their announcement to open. Other districts have seen similar trends. Families are voting with their feet, many opting out of public education for any in-person schooling available.
If nothing else, this situation is a clear example of both union power and their disregard for student concerns. Families, teachers, and taxpayers cannot truly influence school decisions when union members have the power to strike, undue influence in local elections, and the purse of their national affiliates.
The American Federation of Teachers gave more in political donations than the boogie-man Koch Industries did in 2020. Teachers unions have long been a dominant force in local and national politics, both in funding and manpower.
While the worst of the pandemic closures seem nigh over, there’s a clear policy moving forward that can protect students from similar sways of union fickleness: school choice. Zipcodes locked students into closed schools during the pandemic, and only those with means could look elsewhere.
A few others chose “pandemic pods” but even that forces the opportunity cost of staying home from a job. They should have had the freedom to look elsewhere without legal consequences, but our current laws kept them from doing so.
It’s time to continue legislative victories that weaken the sway of government unions over American education. The Supreme Court decision Janus v. AFSCME ensured that no public school teachers need to pay union dues if they do not want to. Local laws in many states increased austerity measures to ensure they don’t follow Detroit’s lead and bankrupt themselves from over-promised, union-bargained pensions. School choice would similarly allow any family to select a school that is less beholden to union pressure.
Unions do not care for students. The pandemic has made this abundantly clear. They’ve lost prestige in many people’s minds from this. It’s right that they continue to lose political power too.
Note to state of Florida: If, as I suspect, you’ve got a lot of snowbird teachers from other states doing remotes from there, I hope to heck your state department of taxation is all over these expletives-deleted.
The only good to come from Covid is remote work and parents realizing how shitty their children’s schooling truly is.
One more, how useless middle management is as well.
Public Employee Unions should be illegal because they sit on both sides of the bargaining table.
Banning Education is VERY EASY and 80% (or more) of conservatives are already on board - every time they stick their kids in front of those monsters we refer to as ‘teachers’, at least in public schools.
(I know, I know, what the hell, it’s FREE!!!)
I have had numerous stressed out parents coming in telling me they are having to “do the teaching” and many kids are failing. Teachers should not be getting paid as much to just post assignments and hold zoom meeting several times a week.
You are being ripped off by the state education system.
bttt
If your kid is smart they will excel at online learning and encounter fewer obstacles to accelerated advancement.
If your kid is dumb, there will be little change as they never had a chance anyway.
Most parents could givva sh!t about their kid’s education.
They’re there for the free daycare.
“I have had numerous stressed out parents coming in telling me they are having to “do the teaching” and many kids are failing.”
Stupid kids will fail no matter the method or venue.
Teachers unions can’t “ban” anything. They can whine, complain, and pout. But they can’t ban anything.
School boards - and beyond them, the governors - are the only ones that have that power. Only they can open, close, or modify schools.
So let’s say a school board decides to open their schools again. And the local teachers union decides to whine, complain, and pout. “Report to your classrooms or be fired”, the school board should say.
Do school boards - and the governors - have the courage to do that? Rarely. But the buck stops with them.
I live in NJ. Right now the little monsters on Christmas break. I don’t know for sure what the situation is if they’re going to be in the building itself or not. I should think we taxpayers ought to be given a tax credit if they’re not going to in the buildings.
Why should we be paying for schools that aren’t open?
Otherwise, the community / union is abridging the constitutionally enumerated guarantee of a republican form of government imo.
"Article IV, Section 4: The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government [emphasis added], and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence."
Also, patriots need to work with their respective state lawmakers to amend their state constitutions to not only make state health official electable by popular vote, but for time-limited by law quarantines ordered by governors, mayors and state health officials to automatically trigger recall elections.
And speaking of costly recall elections, patriots also need to amend state constitutions to require candidates for elected state offices to escrow refundable “recall deposits,” the amounts established by law, the money used to fully fund recall elections for bad-apple politicians.
Insights welcome.
The education model needs to change. Master Teachers supported by professional graphics and video producers can make lessons. Only classroom teachers who can answer questions about the lesson and subject matter should be employed. Get rid of the rest!
v
“Most parents could givva sh!t about their kid’s education. They’re there for the free daycare.”
Could not agree more. They’ll gab, gab, complain, and complain, but the thought of taking charges of their kids’ educations is simply too damn ‘scary’ (or time consuming) for them.
So they make ABSOLUTE FOOLS of themselves. In one case, I was reading about an American who was being relocated to the UK for work, and he was wondering if their schools are as ‘good’ as here. He received his own ‘education’ when the school over there needed to put his kids back 2 grade levels, because that’s what level they were at, compared to European standards.
Sounds good to me.
You can make 5 more days...maybe.
“..:the safest decision amid the uncertainty.” This statement alone puts him solidly in the leftist camp. Anything he says after this is just post hoc rationalizations trying to explain his predilection for justifying tyranny.
Amid uncertainty no decision should be made. The sheeple crying “what if”, “we must do something”, “if it saves one life” , and etc. should be ignored. If they are actually that worried they can place themselves on an island. Action should only be taken based on facts.
We are now hearing from all of the fair weather conservatives and many Freapers on the now Formerly Free Republic how their initial hysteria and support for tyranny was justified i the early days of WuFlu because “ we did not know”.
They were wrong for the beginning and are now double down on dumb.
Our home-grown union teachers here in Florida are already doing a bad enough job of not teaching...they don’t want any competition.
Oddly, the Catholic schools and private schools here seem to be able to open, but I guess public school teachers must be particularly sensitive.
Well, if they’re that sensitive, let them stay home...but don’t give them our tax dollars.
Public unions must be outlawed.
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