{"id":15592,"date":"2021-02-15T00:17:35","date_gmt":"2021-02-15T05:17:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=15592"},"modified":"2021-02-19T21:54:26","modified_gmt":"2021-02-20T02:54:26","slug":"teachers-unions-have-always-been-terrible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2021\/02\/15\/teachers-unions-have-always-been-terrible\/","title":{"rendered":"Teachers Unions Have Always Been Terrible"},"content":{"rendered":"

American Conservative, February 15, 2021<\/h3>\n

Teachers Unions Have Always Been Terrible<\/span><\/a><\/h1>\n
\n

Forty years of getting in the way of childrens\u2019 education<\/p>\n

by James Bovard<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

NEW YORK, NY \u2013 AUGUST 3, 2020: BLM, UFT and other groups participate in a National Day of Resistance to protest for demands including no reopening of schools, police-free schools, and federal funds. (By Ron Adar\/Shutterstock)<\/a><\/div>\n
\n

Americans have been shocked by how teachers unions have blocked school re-openings in many states despite the disastrous learning lag during this pandemic.\u00a0 <\/span>In Montgomery County, Maryland, unreliable \u201cdistance learning\u201d produced a more than 500 percent increase<\/a> in the number<\/a> of black and Hispanic students failing<\/a> classes. McKinsey consultants estimate<\/a> that, if the shutdown continues to the end of this school year, \u201cstudents of color could be six to 12 months behind [due to lost learning], compared with four to eight months for white students.\u201d But teachers unions are claiming that, unlike the vast majority of other American workers, their members are entitled to risk-free environments.<\/p>\n

Unions have vilified any politician or parent who has sought to re-open schools.<\/strong> The Chicago Teachers Union proclaimed<\/a>: \u201cThe push to reopen schools is based in sexism, racism, and misogyny.\u201d Joe Biden owes his election victory in part to the teachers unions, and last week, the White House rejected<\/a> the recommendation to re-open schools from Biden\u2019s appointee as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Rochelle Walensky. And on Friday, the CDC issued new guidance for school safety during the pandemic. As National Public Radio observed<\/a>, \u201cRather than a political push to reopen schools, the update is a measured, data-driven effort to expand on old recommendations.\u201d One of the clearest lessons of this pandemic is that politicians will always be able to find data to justify whatever restrictions or delays they favor. With or without the CDC recommendations, \u201chonesty in shutdowns\u201d remains as unlikely as #ZeroCovid. Reason<\/em> magazine\u2019s Matt Welch predicts<\/a> that \u201cCDC\u2019s new \u2018reopening\u2019 guidance will keep schools closed in the Fall.\u201d During the presidential campaign, Biden pledged<\/a> to re-open schools within 100 days of taking office. But now Biden is betraying that promise. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said<\/a> last week that the Biden goal of reopening the schools within 100 days will be satisfied if 50 percent of schools are open \u201cat least one day a week.\u201d<\/p>\n

The behavior of teachers unions during this pandemic confirms the nickname that Forbes<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>magazine gave the NEA<\/a> in the 1990s: \u201cThe National Extortion Association.\u201d This latest betrayal of American students is no surprise, considering the unions\u2019 long history of sabotaging learning.<\/strong> Since the 1970s, the National Education Association has been the leading advocate<\/a> of \u201cno-fault\u201d teaching: whatever happens, don\u2019t blame the teacher. Unions have launched strikes to prevent \u201cparental interference\u201d in public education. The Chicago Tribune<\/i> concluded<\/a> in 1988 that the Chicago Teachers Association has \u201cas much control over operations of the public schools as the Chicago Board of Education\u201d and \u201cmore control than is available to principals, parents, taxpayers, and voters.\u201d The Tribune<\/i> noted that \u201ceven curriculum matters, such as the program for teaching children to read, are written into the [union] contract, requiring the board to bring any proposed changes to the bargaining table.\u201d<\/p>\n

Teachers unions have worked to destroy local control of education, subvert standards, prevent teacher accountability, and deny parents a significant voice in their children\u2019s education. In the late 1970s, the NEA denounced<\/a> back-to-basics as \u201cirrelevant and reactionary.\u201d An NEA publication asserted that such reforms were orchestrated by the \u201cneo-conservative New Right, a mixture of taxpayer groups, fundamentalists, and a few unreconstructed racists.\u201d The same publication denounced minimum competency testing for students because it supposedly \u201csacrificed children who are black and poor on the altar of accountability.\u201d As Richard Mitchell noted<\/a> in his 1981 classic, The Graves of Academe<\/i>, the NEA has helped debase American public schools because its members \u201cwanted to be not teachers but preachers, and prophets too, charging themselves with the cure of the soul of democracy and the raising up in the faith of true believers.\u201d For decades, the NEA pushed to have \u201csocial studies\u201d replace history, government, and other classes. The result: American students are appallingly ignorant of the Constitution, American history, and American culture.<\/p>\n

Teachers unions increasingly look like conspiracies to protect incompetent teachers and impoverish local taxpayers. Teachers unions are especially powerful in inner cities, where teacher pay is often highest and teacher performance is usually the worst.<\/strong> As far back as 1974, Mario Fantini noted<\/a> in his book What\u2019s Best for Children<\/i>, \u201cFor many black and Puerto Rican parents, the teachers unions now represent the \u2018enemy.\u2019\u201d A 1992 Detroit Free Press<\/i> investigation entitled \u201cShielding Bad Teachers\u201d found that it takes a Michigan school district seven years and costs an average of $100,000 to fire a single incompetent public school teacher. Seven years is over half of the schooling time of the average pupil. The Free Press<\/i>concluded<\/a>, \u201cNo protections are built in for the state\u2019s 1.5 million public school students, who can suffer physical, sexual or educational abuse.\u201d Thanks in large part to NEA priorities, by 1980 the average time spent studying traditional subjects in high school was less than three hours a day. A vast increase in government spending for schools has failed to undo the damage to students\u2019 reading ability.<\/p>\n

The clout of the teachers unions has become far more perilous during the COVID-19 pandemic. Schools have perennially behaved as if they were entitled to waste kids\u2019 time, and now teacher unions feel entitled to practically waste a year of children\u2019s lives.<\/strong> When lockdowns were first being imposed in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo proclaimed<\/a> a standard that guided many policymakers: \u201cIf everything we do saves just one life, I\u2019ll be happy.\u201d Teachers unions have rallied around a similar motto<\/a>: \u201cIf one teacher dies, isn\u2019t that too many?\u201d But like most union-backed policies, this ignores the collateral damage on American children. A<\/i>Journal of the American Medical Association<\/i> analysis concluded<\/a> that shutting down the schools would reduce the current crop of students\u2019 collective years of life by more than five million, based<\/a> on \u201clower income, reduced educational attainment, and worse health outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Private schools have safely re-opened in many cities and states where government schools remain padlocked. As Wall Street Journal<\/i> editorial writer Bill McGurn wrote<\/a> recently, \u201cCatholic schools prove you can keep classrooms open while keeping Covid-19 at bay, which gave teachers unions another reason to resent them. The good news is that Covid-19 has heightened awareness that too many kids are held in education limbo by public-school systems that cannot put their students first because they are hostage to the unions.\u201d Tom Carroll, superintendent of Catholic schools for the Archdiocese of Boston, observed<\/a>, \u201cThe science is clear that there is no substitute for in-person learning, especially for poor and minority children most at danger of falling behind.\u201d<\/p>\n

School systems are finally responding to outraged parents, but with sham school re-openings. After Maryland\u2019s Gov. Larry Hogan ordered all of the state\u2019s school systems to start in-person classes by March 1, the Montgomery County school system pretended to comply. Similar to the response in school systems in the Virginia suburbs, Montgomery will hire<\/a> \u201cclassroom monitors\u201d to oversee students sitting in desks while teachers remain absent from the classroom. A Maryland parents\u2019 organization bitterly complained: \u201cStaring at a Chromebook while your teacher teaches on a screen is not in-person instruction, and it is frankly unacceptable. It is clear [the school system] does not want to embrace a true return to schools.\u201d One Montgomery County mother of two students groused that the new system \u201csounds like glorified babysitting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chicago is suffering similar shenanigans. The city sought to placate teacher unions by spending<\/a> \u201c$100 million on personal protective equipment, disinfectants, ventilation improvements, and portable air purifiers.\u201d But then the teachers union announced that they could not return to work until all school employees were vaccinated. Mayor Lori Lightfoot groused<\/a> that the teachers union leadership \u201cleft us with a big bag of nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

President Biden endlessly appeals for \u201cunity\u201d while he sacrifices the interests of millions of children to his political supporters.<\/strong> CNN anchor Jake Tapper commented<\/a> last week on Twitter, \u201cI\u2019ve yet to see any evidence the Biden administration disagrees with teachers unions. Even when THEIR OWN health officials are saying something different.\u201d Biden\u2019s tacit support of school shutdowns promises that in the coming years his administration will sacrifice children in other ways to placate teachers unions. America will see a new \u201cachievement gap\u201d between privately educated students and those whose brains were offered up on the altar of teacher union power.<\/p>\n

One of the clearest lessons of the COVID pandemic is that public employee unions cannot be trusted with children\u2019s minds.\u00a0 <\/span>Parents and politicians should speedily move to maximize the number of students who can exploit vouchers to escape public schools and to repudiate laws and labor agreements that are helping blight a rising generation.\u00a0 <\/span>If politicians continue kowtowing to unions, parents must make their wrath felt or forfeit their children\u2019s future.<\/strong><\/p>\n

James Bovard<\/strong>\u00a0is the author of\u00a0<\/i>Lost Rights<\/a>,\u00a0<\/i>Attention Deficit Democracy<\/a>, and\u00a0<\/i>Public Policy Hooligan<\/a>. He is also a\u00a0<\/i>USA Today\u00a0columnist. Follow him on Twitter\u00a0<\/i>@JimBovard<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

American Conservative, February 15, 2021 Teachers Unions Have Always Been Terrible Forty years of getting in the way of childrens\u2019 education by James Bovard NEW YORK, NY \u2013 AUGUST 3, 2020: BLM, UFT and other groups participate in a National Day of Resistance to protest for demands including no reopening of schools, police-free schools, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2124,2670,2669,1020,2349,2370,2667,2672,2673,2429,2668,2671,203,2269,2666,2313,2488,257],"class_list":["post-15592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-biden","tag-bill-mcgurn","tag-catholic-schools","tag-chicago","tag-covid","tag-cuomo","tag-fairfax-county","tag-jake-tapper","tag-jen-psaki","tag-larry-hogan","tag-literacy","tag-lori-lightfoot","tag-maryland","tag-montgomery-county","tag-national-education-association","tag-pandemic","tag-teacher-unions","tag-virginia"],"yoast_head":"\nTeachers Unions Have Always Been Terrible - 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \\\"the roving inspector general of the modern state\\\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \\\"one-man truth squad.\\\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \\\"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\\\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.\",\"sameAs\":[\"http:\\\/\\\/www.jimbovard.com\",\"https:\\\/\\\/www.facebook.com\\\/jim.bovard\",\"https:\\\/\\\/x.com\\\/jimbovard\"],\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/author\\\/admin\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Teachers Unions Have Always Been Terrible - James Bovard","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2021\/02\/15\/teachers-unions-have-always-been-terrible\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Teachers Unions Have Always Been Terrible - 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","https:\/\/x.com\/jimbovard"],"url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15592"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15622,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15592\/revisions\/15622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}