I feel sorry for American parents who are forced to send their kids to public schools. And yes, there are many parents who know there are alternatives but, for various reasons, find it impossible to change.
If their children attend a school run by a union and hire only union teachers, the chances are very good that they are being shortchanged when it comes to learning basic skills. At every level and every step of the way, unions sacrifice learning on the altar of union avarice.
"By 2041, union hotbeds like New York, Illinois, and California are projected to lose nearly a third of their high-school students," writes UnHerd's Joel Kotkin. "By 2041, union hotbeds like New York, Illinois, and California are projected to lose nearly a third of their high-school students."
It doesn't matter. Kotkin notes that "while losing 130,000 students so far in this decade, the Los Angeles Unified School District has managed to add 11,000 employees."
Cities that negotiate contracts refuse to stand up to the unions, and when they try, anguished parents who use schools as babysitters complain vociferously.
Despite California burning through $20,000 per pupil, "Two out of three California students didn’t meet state math standards, and more than half didn’t meet English standards on state assessments," observes Kotkin.
California's vaunted public universities are being forced to offer remedial courses in math. It's not just California. "A recent federal survey suggests the share of Americans at the lowest levels of literacy has now reached 28%, up from 19% a decade ago," writes Kotkin. Have parents become less interested in their children's educational progress? The issue is less about parents losing interest in their children's education and more about major shifts in how that interest is expressed, along with growing barriers to traditional engagement.
Home-based reading has declined, which isn't surprising given the drop-off in adult reading. Parental tracking of academic progress has largely migrated to digital gradebooks, school websites, and direct messaging apps. While parents check assignment completion and attendance online more frequently than in previous decades, teachers report that this digital oversight doesn't always translate into active academic reinforcement or homework help at home.
Rather than disengaging, many parents have redirected their energy toward other education issues, such as school board oversight, curriculum transparency, and school choice options, rather than traditional PTA activities. This has resulted in an explosion of homeschooling options and hybrid educational opportunities that previous generations didn't have.
And it removes the number one impediment to educational progress for most students.
Illinois, another union bastion, also fits the bill. Under the state’s ultra-rich governor, JB Pritzker, himself a product of expensive private schools, Illinois has dismantled much of its fledgling charter program — publicly funded schools that aren’t bound by union contracts and thus can drive student achievement more aggressively. And the results? The Land of Lincoln boasts 53 schools in which not one student can do grade-level math and 30 in which none can achieve this in English. Despite major increases in spending per student in recent years, there has been extraordinarily little apparent improvement in results.
In no city is the teachers' union more powerful than in Chicago. They have the city by the short hairs. They elected a mayor, Brandon Johnson, despite his radical left persona. "Johnson has sought to allow Chicago students to celebrate May Day as 'an opportunity to elevate the consciousness of our civic responsibility,'" says Kotkin. "That’s a pompous way to describe a blanket permission slip to skip class to attend protests, without consulting parents."
The great irony is that as schools continue to fail, the increasingly radical teachers unions are achieving remarkable political success. Since 1990, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, the two largest teachers unions, have regularly been among the top-10 contributors to federal electoral campaigns, expending an estimated $1 billion for political purposes over the past decade, overwhelmingly steered to Democrats. It is almost impossible to imagine a successful Democratic presidential candidate winning the party’s nomination without genuflecting in their direction.
Union-backed candidates win 70% of school board races across the country. That ensures the radical curricula that parents are up in arms about continue to be taught no matter how much opposition to it is mounted.
The union's primary goal is not bettering children's reading and math skills, but using its massive political power to eliminate the competition from charter schools.
"They do this despite charters’ superior academic performance," writes Kotkin. "School choice, including charters, is one reason why the most rapid advances in test scores have come from unlikely places, such as Tennessee and, most amazingly, Mississippi, where union power is weaker."
Instead of driving educational improvement, the unions increasingly seek to control curricula in schools in favor of their radical politics. They have been a key force driving curricula that focus on race, gender, the evils of Western civilization, and climate catastrophism. In the United States, this starts at the top, with the AFT’s boss, Randi Weingarten, an unabashed progressive and critical powerbroker in the Democratic Party. She is even trying to integrate DEI-friendly artificial intelligence into classrooms.
Kotkin points out that "Instead of improving results, union members now do such things as inform on the movements of ICE agents — activism that the head of the United Teachers of Los Angeles described as 'really beautiful.'”
"America’s future relies on having an educated population, trained not in ideology but in critical thinking and knowledge," writes Kotkin. "Instead of pushing this goal, the teachers’ representatives seem more concerned with their own agenda."
Until parents unite and stand up to this anti-Americanism being drilled into their children, the rout of the American mind will continue. We've already seen the results taking hold among young people, a solid plurality of whom think that socialism is a viable economic system.
Aside from a little healthy union busting, I'm not sure what to do about it.
