No state had universal school choice before 2021. In the last three years, eleven states have enacted it. This is a huge achievement — and more wins for America’s children are coming. School choice supporters are thankful to the power-hungry teachers unions, which went too far and caused a parent revolution.
The teachers unions-triggered school closures harmed students academically, mentally, and emotionally, with almost no decrease in overall coronavirus transmission or child mortality. Parents were understandably angry at the public schools that had betrayed them during their time of need, and they weren’t going to just accept it.
How did the unions react to efforts to gain more control? By attacking parents, of course. No, it wasn’t the virus that needed to be defeated. It was you, mom and dad.
The unions publicly attacked parents who had the boldness to suggest that schools should do their jobs. In Chicago, the home of the nation’s third-largest public school system, the local union took to Twitter to demonize those who favored reopening schools: “The push to reopen schools is rooted in sexism, 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 attacking 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.”
I’m old enough to remember when the term “white supremacist” referred to those — such as neo-Nazis and members of the Ku Klux Klan — who believed that the white race is superior to other races. Now the unions and their allies were attacking parents as “white supremacists” for the terrible thought crime of wanting their children to go to school.
The smear became a recurring 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.”
Similarly, 140 members of the Pasco Association of Educators in Washington state claimed 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 community spread.” The Washington Post even ran a blog post by a union member in New Haven, Connecticut, criticizing 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, wrote 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. The reality was that although white parents were, on average, more likely to be ready to return to in-person instruction before minority parents, significant portions of families across the racial and ethnic spectrum wanted in-person instruction.
When the Chicago school district did a survey of parents in March 2021, over 40% wanted to go back to in-person classes. Although the survey did not specify the race or ethnicity of the participants, around 30% of the students who returned for in-person classes that month were mostly black or Latino.
Ironically, the Friedberg article spent several paragraphs stating that “remote learning is not a lost cause” and that the “‘learning loss’ argument is incredibly flawed.” Not only has massive learning loss been unquestionably documented, but it’s also significantly worse among black students.
The McKinsey organization found that by the end of the 2020–21 academic school year, students “in majority-Black schools ended the school year six months behind in both math and reading, while students in majority-white schools ended up just four months behind in math and three months behind in reading.” If any policy had racist results, it was the union-pushed school closures and remote learning — which really should be called remotely learning — not parent-backed school reopenings.
The California Teachers Association (CTA) even stooped to spying on parents, doing what amounts to opposition research, the same as political candidates do on their opponents. A public records request revealed emails from a union employee asking a public school principal for information about “the ideological leaning of groups that are funding the reopen lawsuits.” She noted that she had heard the principal had “lots of information 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 don’t think there will be an issue,” she wrote, “unless someone does a record request for his work email.”
The hypocrisy of the unions knows no bounds. In March 2021, while the CTA was still fighting tooth and nail to keep schools closed while spying on parents who wanted them open, the president of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers, Matt Meyer, was caught on camera taking his own kid to an in-person private preschool.
The unions even did oppo research on parents trying new ways of educating their children 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. Rather than embracing the idea, the unions sought to sabotage it.
Prenda was founded in 2018 by Kelly Smith, an MIT grad who was inspired by his kids’ experience at an afternoon coding club to create a network of small schools (typically five to ten students each) where learning is self-directed with the assistance of online tools and an in-person “guide.” While schools were closed during the pandemic, Prenda received a surge in interest from parents —especially those who wanted the benefits of in-person instruction while limiting their children’s potential exposure. Prenda began 2020 with about one thousand students at one hundred microschools and ended the year with four times that.
The unions got worried as Prenda grew quickly. They were afraid that kids who left public schools for Prenda might not want to go back.
The National Education Association made a plan to scare parents away from trying Prenda. They wrote two reports that warned about microschools in general and Prenda specifically, saying that microschools have limited support and don't offer the same rights and standards as public schools.
The report found over 20 other microschool networks and recommended that their staff know about the NEA's anti-microschool talking points, which included issues like lack of civil rights protections, uncredentialed staff, and students not being held to state learning standards. closed.
The second report focused on Prenda and included personal info about Kelly Smith, as well as concerns about safety regarding guns, drugs, and unfenced swimming pools for microschool students.
Groups backed by unions used these points to push for regulations on Prenda and other microschools, but state legislators saw through their arguments and microschools continued to succeed.
It was ironic for unions to argue that using parents’ homes for microschooling was unsafe while also arguing that students were not safe at school during the pandemic.
Friedberg said he supported keeping schools closed to protect lives, but not everyone in the group agreed. Sarah Chambers, for example, seemed to have other reasons for working remotely.
Sarah Chambers was tweeting from Puerto Rico, thousands of miles away, while claiming to be poolside at a resort. This raised questions about her dedication to her work.
The unions' actions awakened a sleeping giant: the parents. For too long, only the employees' interests were represented in K-12 education, but now, parents stand up for their kids.
This is an excerpt from The Parent Revolution: Rescuing Your Kids from the Radicals Ruining Our Schools (Center Street, May 14).
