Government schools have become an unlikely battleground in the culture war.
The Left somehow thought it would be a good idea to antagonize parents and turn them into a voting bloc.
Now the teachers unions are furious about one growing movement.
Proponents of school choice are growing by the minute.
Instead of being trapped in failing local schools, parents can send their kids to better-performing public schools or private schools where the taxpayer dollars follow the child.
Teachers unions have been vehement opponents of school choice and voucher programs because control transfers from the unions to the parents.
In light of COVID lockdowns and “wokeness” being taught in the classroom, homeschooling, teaching pods, and school choice are on the rise.
Needless to say, the unions and their comrades in the press are sounding the alarm at the new trend.
David Marques of The New Republic smeared National School Choice Week as “that annual right-wing P.R. campaign to defund public schools that pretends to really just care about the children.”
The Left pretend to care about the children, but they don’t – their only concern is union control.
And the unions exist to protest the teachers, not the students.
For example, it can take years to fire a bad teacher for misconduct – they get stashed in “rubber rooms” while on administrative leave.
And the dire public school performance numbers don’t even cause the Left to flinch.
They use the horrid graduation and proficiency rates as a plea for more funding, which has increased dramatically over the past 40 years.
Former teacher and anti-school choice activist Peter Greene wrote, “It’s all about the three D’s – disrupt, defund, and dismantle. Call the voucher system whatever you would like, but it is about reducing education from a public good and shared societal responsibility to a simple consumer good.”
Again, the union advocates care about the educational system, not the children.
When Barack Obama was President, parents whose kids were zoned to failing Washington, D.C. government schools had to beg yearly to keep the city’s voucher program alive.
As much as the teachers unions want to frame school choice as a “right-wing” bogeyman, parents in Democrat-run states are eager for choice.
The track record for many government schools is abysmal, which is why so many anti-choice activists send their own kids to private school.
Choice, at minimum, would force government schools to improve in order to get taxpayer dollars.
The tide could be turning in government-run education.
Stay tuned to Right News Wire for any updates to this ongoing story.
