The Battle Lines Are Drawn On Public Education Francis Menton
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-8-20-the-battle-lines-are-drawn-on
In a post a week ago, co-blogger (and daughter) Jane remarked that the school shut-downs resulting from the ongoing pandemic provided a golden opportunity for disruption of the monopoly unionized public school model. If schools wouldn’t re-open, perhaps the vast taxpayer funds at issue (or some substantial portion thereof) could simply be redirected to the parents to be used to educate their children as they see fit? Who could even object to that?
Well, make no mistake, the people running the show right now think that they have a sufficient lock on the situation that they can keep getting paid full dollar, provide little or no actual education for the money, and at the same time prevent any competitive alternatives from gaining a toehold. In its current configuration, the Democratic Party, at both state and national levels, is firmly committed to advancing the interests of their friends in the teachers unions, while the students — particularly minorities — get stuck in failure factories from which there is no escape.
The award for the most outrageous chutzpah on this subject goes to Michael Mulgrew, head of the New York United Federation of Teachers. Yesterday Mulgrew held a two-plus hour press conference on the subject of re-opening the New York City schools in September. Mayor de Blasio, to his at least partial credit, has proposed a partial re-opening beginning September 10, with parents having the option of sending their kids for several days a week of in-person learning. According to yesterday’s New York Post, Mulgrew was having none of it:
“Every single person — both adult and child — that is to enter an NYC school must have evidence that they do not have the COVID virus,” Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, told reporters at a press conference, where he laid out the demand. . . . “If all the schools open on Sept. 10, and everything that we just laid out is not in place, the union is prepared to go to court and/or go on strike, if we need to,” he said.
The Post points out that there is not nearly sufficient testing capacity to meet Mulgrew’s demand. In other words, the demand effectively means that the schools have no alternative but to remain closed, and the kids must learn remotely if at all. Teachers will get paid in full for conducting remote classes for which students may or may not show up. As to the fact (cited in Jane’s post) that barely half of the kids in high-poverty schools have participated actively in these distance-learning classes — what concern is that of Mulgrew and his minions?
In the union-dominated world of New York politics, Mulgrew is right that no amount of over-the-top behavior from him and his members — even claiming full pay for no work at all — will lead to material diversion of state funds to competitive alternatives. Providing state money to parents to fund “Covid Pods” awaits a big political push from parents that hasn’t yet even begun. And as to charters, after a couple of decades of growth, they are now running up against caps that the progressive-controlled legislature looks unlikely to lift. Mulgrew has the parents right where he wants them.
Is there a chance for some relief at the federal level? Not if the Democrats can help it. The subject is addressed in the Biden-Sanders “unity platform” from July. As to direct-to-parent funding:
Democrats oppose private school vouchers and other policies that divert taxpayer-funded resources away from the public school system.
For charter schools, it’s somewhat less explicit; but the “unity platform” is filled with ways to hobble and restrict charters from providing effective competition to the unionized failure factories. Excerpt:
We support measures to increase accountability for charter schools, including by requiring all charter schools to meet the same standards of transparency as traditional public schools, including with regard to civil rights protections, racial equity, admissions practices, disciplinary procedures, and school finances.
To learn about the remarkable success of many charter schools in providing quality education, particularly to minority students, I highly recommend Thomas Sowell’s new book Charter Schools and Their Enemies. The book is full of statistics. In particular, he compares test results of students attending traditional district schools and charter schools located in the same building in New York City. As one example, a district school called the William Floyd School shares a building with the Success Academy charter school. On the 2017-18 mathematics proficiency test at the district school among 4th graders, 40 kids scored at level 1 (lowest), 43 at level 2 (below proficiency), 14 at level 3 (proficient) and 2 at level 4 (highest). At the Success Academy school in the same building among 4th graders, 0 scored at level 1, 0 at level 2, 6 at level 3 and 94 at level 4. OK then. Admittedly, this is one of the more extreme examples. But in almost every case, the charters out-perform the district schools, often dramatically.
So the battle lines are drawn. Whose side are you on — the teachers unions (and the Democratic Party) or the minority kids?
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