Unions attacking school reopenings are only endangering students

Washington Examiner | July 31, 2020
By Carolyn Manion, Special Assistant for External Affairs of CER, and Jeanne Allen, Founder and CEO of CER

As school systems are struggling to manage the myriad challenges of reopening, the American Federation of Teachers Union President Randi Weingarten announced that her union had approved teacher strikes as a “last resort” to protest school reopening plans that do not meet its laundry list of demands and safety standards. Blasting any potential success for teachers and students to venture back to school through various remote or on-ground learning options this fall, these so-called “safety strikes” in the name of protecting public schools will place millions of students at risk of not receiving education indefinitely, while districts in different locales deal with varying pandemic conditions.

Meanwhile, National Education Association affiliates throughout the country are “marching” against opening schools, attacking governors who are working to help get teachers and students back safely and demanding that concessions be made regardless of whether schools are preparing for in-person or remote learning, including getting rid of charter schools, which have been working throughout the summer to open on time and prepare to offer a number of educational approaches.

From Massachusetts, which has stalled the start of the school year in response to union demands in the name of pandemic response, to Florida, where the union is suing the governor to avoid opening on time, militant union leaders across the country have been taking advantage of the pandemic since early on in the COVID-19 crisis, and they show no signs of changing course. “Nothing is off the table,” claimsWeingarten regarding measures the AFT will advocate to force districts to keep school from happening until the virus is under control. Such statements ignore that students, now more than ever, need schools to go above and beyond to provide education during such times of great upheaval and that every city and state is different.

As Anthony Fauci said in a conversation just this week with AFT’s Weingarten (emphasis added):

“Things are so different in different parts of the country. … If you look at the extraordinary level of different viral activity in different parts of the country, what might be good in one county, one region, one city or state might not be the same at all in another.”

“ The default situation should be that we should try to the best of our ability to get the children back to school. The reason for that is the psychological welfare of the children, even the nutrition of the children … [and] the downstream ripple effects that impact working families … so we should try to get them back.”

“However, paramount of all of this must be the safety, the health and the welfare of the children, teachers, school personnel … and the family of those people.”

In other words, safety is paramount, but the decisions should be based on local conditions, which are not a variable in Weingarten’s labor actions. Nowhere in her or other union leaders’ playbooks is recognition of the wide variety of options that can be available for parents and teachers to make education work effectively in person. Flexible and personalized options for remote, hybrid, or in-person education abound when those key constituencies choose, rather than a monolithic group that has no personal knowledge of every child and its communities’ conditions.

Weingarten and her colleagues have a sordid history of shutting off students from opportunity, especially the marginalized students most in need of those opportunities. Their track record of opposing charter schools (many of which are ahead of the curve and hard at work preparing to make education happen this fall) along with their efforts to maintain the status quo of ZIP code-based educationreveal a callous disregard for the goals of fairness and opportunity they claim to advocate. In 2017, in the face of declining AFT membership and growing charter school enrollment, Weingarten smeared charter schools as “slightly more polite cousins of segregation,” a laughable claim given the civil rights movement roots of the charter school and voucher movements. The unions and several similarly aligned organizations have even opposed voucher measures in the HEALS Act that could benefit numerous underprivileged students harmed by the pandemic closures.

In the words of Steve Perry, a highly successful urban school founder, at a recent event, “The problem is that charter schools are an existential threat to the status quo.” Unions are more passionate about protecting the bloated education establishment than children. Giving teachers the green light to invest time, energy, and resources into strikes rather than into collaborating on real solutions that will help students learn regardless of the pandemic’s course is disappointing but par for the course. So long as they hold our students’ education hostage, their activism will only continue to revolve around their own interests. “You, as unions, have proven to be the worst thing to happen to public education. You are the problem.”

The solution to what the unions claim to be fighting for (safety) is to ensure that students and families have equitable access to whatever educational option works best for their situation. Let the families and teachers decide, not people entirely disconnected from their plight, miles away and more concerned about the national election than whether students graduate next year. There must be critical, systemic changes that leverage policy and innovation to open the door to opportunities for all families during the pandemic, regardless of ZIP code or income bracket. Such policy changes will preclude a repeat of the months, without learning, that students in Philadelphia and Milwaukee underwent in the spring. Students need an effective and dependable school experience this fall, where learning does not cease altogether because of a protective equipment shortage, infection spike, or similar hypothetical situation, but empower parents and professionals to provide vulnerable students with tangible educational opportunities for success.

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Founded in 1993, the Center for Education Reform aims to expand educational opportunities that lead to improved economic outcomes for all Americans — particularly our youth — ensuring that conditions are ripe for innovation, freedom and flexibility throughout U.S. education.