Teacher Unions Do Not Represent the Interests of Students, Parents & Taxpayers

Half the kids in the country cannot read or do math at grade level and inner city kids are way below grade level.  This national crisis exists because teacher unions oppose any reforms aimed at solving the problem.  They also oppose public charter schools because they can’t control them.  Obviously, teacher unions are against School Choice because the last thing they want is for the money to follow the kids so that all parents can send their kids to private schools if they choose to do so and not just the rich.  The fact is that teacher unions need to keep the kids on the plantation like slaves serving their masters.   It is all about jobs and great benefits and pensions certainly not the interests of students, parents, and taxpayers. 

And, there is a real disincentive to actually improving the quality education because if kids read and do math at grade level, public schools would lose billions of federal dollars every year that only go to school districts because the kids are way below grade level.  As I was told years ago, by a White Vice Principal when we actually improved test scores, “we had to be careful because if we got the kids to the 50th percentile, we would lose our federal monies and a lot of jobs depended on that money”.  I remember retorting that it would mean that we had taught the kids to read to which the Vice Principal responded, that “I had to see the bigger picture”.  As a 28 year old idealistic teacher, I was shocked and left teaching three months later never to return.  

Fast forward to today.  For the past several months I have been pushing the incompetent woke Washoe County School Board in Reno, Nevada where I live to put a Quality Education Task Force together to improve academic achievement in the school district, which is dismal.  Like the nation, half the kids in Washoe cannot read or do math at grade level and inner city kids are way below grade level.  Most of the schools in Washoe get a rating of 5 or lower out of 10 on the Great Schools Rating system.  And, Nevada ranks 49th in the nation related to academic achievement primarily because of Clark County (Las Vegas) and Washoe County (Reno) where probably 85% of the states kids attend school.  Both school districts stink.  

It is no surprise that while the woke School Board convened a Social Justice Task Force, which I volunteered for and was excluded from to push Critical Race Theory Marxist, racist, revisionist, fake history and 1619 Project indoctrination and imposition of the radical LGBTQIA agenda right down to kindergarten, they would not agree to put a Quality Education Task Force together because the reforms needed would be opposed by the teacher’s union.  It is criminal malpractice. 

And, just this week they have selected a new woke Superintendent that was endorsed by the teachers union without any involvement of parents and other concerned citizens that volunteered for the selection committee and were excluded because we oppose what they are doing.  The fix was in.  What a surprise.  This occurred after the School Board went through 3 failed Superintendents in a row.  Now, we will see a fourth that will do NOTHING to improve the quality of education in Washoe because she is a left wing radical lackey owned by the teacher’s union.  It will be same old same old failure.  The new Superintendent will have to be fired sooner than later.  It is very sad; but it makes the case for public charter schools and School Choice, both of which teacher unions and Socialist Fascists (AKA Democrats) oppose.  The public schools are lost without significant reform.  We now have to starve the beast to get any change.  It will not happen any other way.