There are 1.85 million public school students in grades K to 12 in Illinois. Of those, 1.2 million of them, 65 percent, cannot read at grade level, and 1.4 million, 76 percent, do not have math skills at grade level.
Did you know that?
When only 35% of our students have basic English language competence and only 24% have basic math skills, why isn’t that on the front page of every newspaper every day?
Why isn’t the cause being debated in the legislature, at school boards, in the press continuously?
On average, Illinois currently spends $24,000 per student per year to educate each child. Twenty-four thousand dollars—for 35% grade level competence in English language and 24% grade level competence in math. Meanwhile, teachers’ proficiency statewide in 2022 was rated at 97.2%.
Children are failing, and teachers are outstanding?
If the teachers are not responsible, who is? Is it Congress that has created a bloated, labyrinthine bureaucracy? Is it the state legislature that, like Congress, added even more layers to the already unwieldy system? Is it the school boards, the administrators, the teachers, the parents? Where is the accountability?
A case can be made that the responsibility lies with all of the above. But another group, not yet mentioned, holds a powerful grip on every element of potential responsibility. The teachers unions.
The National Education Association (NEA) is the largest teachers’ union in the country. In fact, it is the largest labor union in the country, with 2.9 million members. The second largest teachers’ union, with its 1.7 million members, is the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). These groups have incredible political muscle at every level of government. From Presidential candidates to small-town city council members, candidates jockey for support from the teachers’ unions.
The Chicago Teachers’ Union (CTU), alone, has given $17,000,000 to political campaigns since 2010. The CTU is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers.
Nationally, three teachers’ union Political Action Committees (PAC)’s, as reported by “Open the Books,” gave a little over four million dollars to campaigns from 2021-2022. Most of this money goes to Democrat candidates. In the case of these PAC’s, $4,067,442 went to Democrat candidates, while $24,000 went to Republican candidates.
Why is the imbalance so huge?
What is the purpose of these unions? According to the AFT mission statement:
“The American Federation of Teachers is a union of professionals that champions fairness; democracy; economic opportunity; and high-quality public education, healthcare and public services for our students, their families and our communities. We are committed to advancing these principles through community engagement, organizing, collective bargaining and political activism, and especially through the work our members do.”
The NEA mission statement is more elaborate and wordy:
“Mission, Vision and Values
“We are as diverse as the students we represent, but united in our purpose: championing justice and excellence in public education.”
“The National Education Association
We, the members of the National Education Association of the United States, are the voice of education professionals. Our work is fundamental to the nation, and we accept the profound trust placed in us.
“Our Vision
“Our vision is a great public school for every student.
“Our Mission
“Our mission is to advocate for education professionals and to unite our members and the nation to fulfill the promise of public education to prepare every student to succeed in a diverse and interdependent world.
“Our Core Values
“These principles guide our work and define our mission:
1.) “Equal Opportunity. We believe public education is the gateway to opportunity. All students have the human and civil right to a quality public education that develops their potential, independence, and character.
2.) “A Just Society. We believe public education is vital to building respect for the worth, dignity, and equality of every individual in our diverse society.
3.) “Democracy. We believe public education is the cornerstone of our republic. Public education provides individuals with the skills to be involved, informed, and engaged in our representative democracy.
4.) “Professionalism. We believe that the expertise and judgment of education professionals are critical to student success. We maintain the highest professional standards, and we expect the status, compensation, and respect due all professionals.
5.) “Partnership. We believe partnerships with parents, families, communities, and other stakeholders are essential to quality public education and student success.
6.) “Collective Action. We believe individuals are strengthened when they work together for the common good. As education professionals, we improve both our professional status and the quality of public education when we unite and advocate collectively.
“NEA also believes every student in America, regardless of family income or place of residence, deserves a quality education. In pursuing its mission, NEA has determined that we will focus the energy and resources of our 3.2 million members [the actual number is 2.9 million members] on improving the quality of teaching, increasing student achievement and making schools safer, better places to learn.”
The bottom line for both unions is to represent the interests of teachers, students and the community. These interests include safety, a great education, and a just society.
Do these goals seem a little expansive? Most parents would be satisfied with their children learning to read, write, add, and subtract. Add to that, a knowledge of history, a love for our founding principles, an understanding of the law and its origin. Sadly, there is no state in the country where children are being educated in public schools to have any of these skills at an acceptable, much less at an exceptional level.
In fact, the teachers’ unions actively thwart efforts to hold both incompetent and abusive teachers to account and get rid of them.
As for safety, schools are less safe today than they ever have been. Not only are at least 10% of children destined to become victims of educator sexual misconduct, but students and teachers in schools throughout the country also have been or will become victims of violent students. Recently one teacher in Virginia was shot and gravely wounded by a six-year-old.
Very little is being done to stop either the sex abuse or the violence, and the unions are not demanding changes.
How are the unions doing with the goal of promoting justice? Well, is it justice to teach white children that they are privileged oppressors, and teach children of color they are oppressed? Is it right for teachers to encourage and affirm children in their gender transitions while hiding their knowledge of the transitions from parents, as has been documented in more than 1,000 schools? Is the community improved by sexualizing children in the schools by making available to them materials that are vulgar, obscene, depraved?
All this is happening, and the unions are fine with it.
They aren’t just fine with it, they are helping it happen. The Daily Caller recently reported that Democrat lawmakers in Congress worked with the NEA and the AFT to create a law that would block efforts to remove sexually explicit books from school libraries and classrooms. The unions already successfully accomplished that in Illinois. See my article, “Different Perspectives,” on the so-called ban of book bans. Although my article does not mention the unions, the American Library Association (ALA), and the teachers’ unions were among the interests promoting the legislation. These same groups are behind the “Right to Read Act,” which was reintroduced in Congress in April of this year.
This act would provide $500 million in funding for school libraries, protection against liability for librarians who include sexually explicit materials in the collections they supervise and limit the ability of parents and others to remove books with sexually explicit content. More of the decision-making about the collections would be vested with the librarians, who, according to the ALA President, Emily Drabinski, are those who should have that authority.
“Librarians are professionals. We have Master’s degrees,” she said.
“We are experts in thinking about books and thinking about collections we build for everybody, not just the individual.”
Teachers are experts in what children should learn, and librarians are experts in what children should have available to read. This is their thinking. Parents should have little or no say.
Whose children are they?
Think about this.
These books that the teachers’ unions and the librarians want to be available to our children are books that cannot be read on public airways.
If some newsman from NBC or ABC or CBS were to read, on air, excerpts from books such as Gender Queer or All Boys Aren’t Blue or Push or thousands of other such books that are in school libraries right now, those stations would lose their license. Yet the teachers’ unions promote the availability of these books in school libraries across the country.
Why?
The unions also promote questionable history in the name of equity and inclusion. In Chicago and 4,500 other schools across the country, the 1619 Project is being taught to explain how our country was founded to nurture slave-holding institutions and that the American Revolution was fought to protect it. Yet historians from all political perspectives have widely panned this program as containing gross inaccuracies and mischaracterizations.
The consensus among historians is that it’s terrible history and false. In California, and in schools in many areas of the country, students are also taught that Harvey Milk was a hero as part of an effort to focus on the historical contributions of the LGBT community. Yet Harvey Milk had been a known drug dealer, child molester, and a political operative for Jim Jones, of the Jonestown Massacre infamy.
None of this is mentioned in the history of Milk that is taught. Many schools and even a U.S. Navy vessel have been named after him.
Why are the unions promoting inaccurate history?
Then there is the social justice activism promoted by the unions. Following the death of George Floyd, during the early stages of the pandemic, both of the major teachers’ unions endorsed Black Lives Matter (BLM) demonstrations and encouraged student participation despite demanding that schools remain closed for in-class instruction.
As a reminder, BLM has since been proven to have been run by leaders who converted millions in donations to their personal use. Moreover, the organization prides itself on being Marxist in its ideology, a view that is hostile to our nation’s founding principles.
How does this help to equip students to read and write and excel at math and science? Or to love our founding principles, for that matter?
And, of course, the unions also endorse the view that children can be born in the wrong body, that a boy can be born with a girl brain and vice versa. The unions also encourage teaching this view to children as young as 3 or 4. Again, this is in the name of equity and inclusion, and it throws out our understanding of sexuality that humans have held for all of recorded human history.
The union bosses don’t care that such teaching contributes to childhood confusion.
What about the truth? Where is the interest in that?
Couldn’t this interest in promoting sexuality in schools, endorsing distorted history, backing anti-American partisan activism, and embracing gender confusion be a significant reason the academic performance of our children is so poor?
What about the teachers? Where do they stand? Union leaders are elected by the rank and file. What responsibility do they have in supporting the union’s distorted agenda? They have to know what it is. Why don’t they do something? If they are afraid to speak out themselves, why don’t they provide the information to someone who will?
Congress, state legislators, school boards, administrators, teachers’ unions, teachers, and parents all hold varying degrees of responsibility for the failure of our schools. Using their enormous financial resources, the teachers’ unions are pulling the strings on all the others except for parents. Parents tend to like and trust their children’s teachers, so they go along as well.
But that trust parents have in teachers is misplaced.
Most teachers march in lockstep with their unions, or don’t push back against them, even though many don’t agree with the unions’ outlook. It’s not entirely clear why this is. But it is.
The solution for returning competence to our schools is for parents to regain control of their children’s education. Step by step, parents have to start taking an interest in what children are being taught in school and by whom; they have to regain control of the school boards, force state legislators to once again focus on pleasing the majority instead of the loudest special interest, strip teachers’ unions of the ability to make political donations which are used to bend public officials—their bosses—to their will, and elect a governor who will appoint a state school superintendent who will focus all education on English and STEM subjects while reducing the school bureaucracy.
The very first step is for parents, and all eligible voters to start taking responsibility for the education of the next generation.
Leaving it to the so-called experts, like the teachers’ unions want, is not working.
