Nearly half of high school seniors are not proficient in reading or math, and one-third of eighth graders cannot read at a basic level. The aftershocks of pandemic-era school closures are still playing out, with students regressing to levels not seen in more than 25 years, and one in four now chronically absent from the classroom. An overreliance on technology, lax policies around personal devices like cell phones, and weakened discipline standards have only deepened the problem, eroding focus, accountability, and real learning.
The current challenges also extend beyond students. Nearly eight in 10 teachers say they have considered leaving the profession, citing burnout as their pay continues to fall behind that of other college-educated workers. The system is strained at every level, and every person with skin in the game knows it.
Who is at the center of it all? America’s teachers’ unions. While students slip to historic lows in reading and math and classrooms struggle to recover from union-driven school shutdowns, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and its president Randi Weingarten appear focused elsewhere, pouring time, money, and political muscle into ideological conflicts and partisan campaigns instead of fixing the schools they supposedly represent.
As president of the nation’s largest teacher’s union, Weingarten represents 1.8 million educators and plays a central role in shaping K-12 policy and the direction of American education. At a moment of historic academic decline, one might expect her influence to be directed toward fixing it.
It’s not. She is focused on her own political ambitions.
Weingarten has directed the AFT’s resources toward organizing and amplifying explicitly political activism, including the anti-Trump “No Kings” rallies. There, she took the spotlight to declare that “we are not going to let Donald Trump continue to do what he has been doing” and ignoring the fact that Americans voted to elect Donald Trump as President, boldly claimed that “we, the people, have to have the ultimate say.”
Unfortunately, this latest spectacle is nothing new. The AFT has a long record of channeling resources into left-wing political campaigns, protests, and advocacy efforts that have little to do with whether students can read, write, do basic math, or are proficient in these core competencies.
The AFT has funneled tens of millions of dollars to left-wing aligned groups and candidates since 2022, and spent most of last year engaged in aggressive legal and activist campaigns against Trump administration-directed education reforms aimed at restoring parental oversight in curricula and de-politicizing the classroom.
This ideological activism was on full display during the pandemic, when Weingarten advocated and defended keeping schools closed far longer than necessary, even as evidence showed it was safe to reopen. After these devastating setbacks from school closures and virtual learning, the average student is less than halfway to a full academic recovery. In some grades, there has been little to no improvement in reading since classrooms reopened. Chronic absenteeism has surged, especially among lower-income students; in 2024, rates were 57 percent higher than before the pandemic, and Weingarten is directly responsible for this generational learning loss.
Even after nearly $200 billion in emergency federal spending on K-12 education, student performance continues to decline. Students are doing worse than they were a decade ago, and lower-performing students are now further behind than their counterparts were more than 30 years ago. National test scores have fallen to their lowest levels in decades, while The Nation’s Report Card data shows the gap between high- and low-performing students continuing to widen.
At a moment when student outcomes are deteriorating at record levels, the priorities for educational leadership like Weingarten should not be difficult to identify. It begins in the classroom: ensuring children are given foundational tools for critical thinking and can learn how to think (not what to think) and supporting teachers and parents as they help students achieve their full potential.
At the American Parents Coalition, we will continue to educate parents on the blatant partisan actions academic leaders like Weingarten are doing, at the expense of our children. It’s time to reclaim parental authority, and to demand teachers’ unions focus on academic success and not divisive ideologies.
Our children do not get another chance at learning. Their childhood is finite. The major setbacks taking hold now will shape not only academic prospects in their immediate future, but also their confidence, opportunity, and quality of life.
Randi Weingarten prioritizes a political agenda over our kids. She promotes policies that cut parents out of their children’s lives. She uses her platform to advocate for herself, not teachers or students. It’s time for Randi Weingarten to be replaced with a true advocate for education.
America’s athletes once again excelled at the 2024 Olympic games. Without the benefit of massive government-controlled sports programs enjoyed by many of their competitors, they proved their superiority while representing their homeland with sportsmanship and respect.
It’s not jingoistic to point out that America, in spite of some worrisome decline, is still number one in many other spheres. In terms of military might, industrial capacity, and technological innovation, we enjoy preeminence.
Yet our educational system, which in the long run may matter most, is below mediocre. We consistently score below average in math and literary achievement tests versus students from other developed countries.
Worse, we are producing graduates with scant knowledge of their own history, ignorant of the political and economic principles that created their privileged world. Many seem emotionally fragile, enthralled with identity politics and unable to tolerate those with opinions different from their own.
The reason for this is no mystery. American education policymaking is dominated by the federal Department of Education (DOE). The department was created by President Jimmy Carter in gratitude to the teachers’ unions for their support in the 1976 election. It has been the gift that keeps on giving as the DOE has faithfully represented the unions’ interests ever since.
Unfortunately, the union/DOE priorities are more directed to sweeping left-wing political agendas than the education of America’s school children. For example, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona enthusiastically supports radical gender ideology.
At this year’s “Trans Day of Visibility,” he advised children that choosing and changing their own gender is expressing the “gift to see things as they could be.” Our chief educator would better serve children by encouraging them to see things as they are and avoid life choices they may bitterly regret later.
Cardona also has strong feelings that teachers, not parents, should direct children’s education, even where values and morals are concerned. “Teachers know what is best for their kids because they work with them every day,” he assured us in a since deleted tweet.
The two largest teachers’ unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), exposed their near total disregard for the educational progress of their charges during the recent Covid epidemic. They refused to provide in-person teaching long after the scientific evidence was clear that no harm came to children from school attendance.
AFT President Randi Weingarten, in her address at its recent annual conference, didn’t bother to address the enormous educational deficiencies caused by the lockout or exhort her members to focus on the needs of students struggling to catch up academically. Instead, she ranted hysterically about the “violence and fascism” looming if Trump were to win the presidential election. The main obstacle to educational success she perceived was those who question the resource materials that her unionized teachers select for their students of any age.
These unions’ all-purpose remedy for academic shortcomings is more funding. Yet decades of funding increases have produced no positive results.
For example, the Chicago Teachers Union, holding that testing is “junk science rooted in white supremacy,” argued against reopening schools on the grounds that resuming teaching was mere “sexism, racism and misogyny.” Instead, they demanded a $51,000 salary increase, 45 additional days off, and more annual LBGTQ training.
The result: the district now spends $29,028 per student, a 97 percent increase since 2012. Yet during that time, proficiency in math has dropped 78 percent from an already low level and reading proficiency has declined 63 percent. In other words, Chicago public school students are being sent into the world illiterate and mathematically incompetent. But their teachers are well paid.
America has no prospect of improving our educational system until the DOE and the unions are stripped of their influence. It won’t be easy. Realistically this is totally impossible under a Democrat administration, given the strong bonds between the unions and their captive party.
In its 60 plus years of existence, the DOE has failed to provide any academic benefits for our students. The consequences are now becoming apparent. Somehow, we must find the will to eliminate the Department and move forward.
It’s for the children. And the future of America.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
Have you heard the outrageous story of what happened recently in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s capital? Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-Pa.), elected in 2022, had campaigned on school choice for tens of thousands of children, mostly minorities, who are forced to attend failing public schools in places like Philadelphia.
“It’s what I believe,” Shapiro, then state attorney general, assured voters as he ran for governor. Last month on a national Fox News broadcast, Shapiro was unequivocal in his support for school choice because “every child of God” deserves “a quality education.”
But there’s a force far more powerful in politics than Shapiro’s convictions, such as they are. And that force is the teachers unions. They put on a full-court press to stop the roughly 10,000 vouchers for the poorest kids in Pennsylvania’s worst school districts even though the state budget bill gave billions more for the public schools. It didn’t matter that this voucher program comprised less than 0.5% of state spending. The union brass commanded Democrats to vote no on even a single penny going to schools that work.
In the end, Shapiro did a full flip-flop. He vetoed his own promise. He might as well have declared that black lives don’t matter.
Shapiro has presidential ambitions — so he figures he needs the teachers unions behind him. But if he can’t face down Randi Weingarten, how is he ever going to stand up to bullies like China’s President Xi Jinping or Russia’s President Vladimir Putin?
This story isn’t just about Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania. In North Carolina, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper declared a state of emergency in the Tar Heel State because the legislature wanted to fund vouchers for kids to go to the best schools possible. Egads!
In Arizona, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs wants to defund a school choice program that is already serving tens of thousands of kids, most of whom are Hispanic, with proven results of better performance and higher test scores. Why would she kill a program that is working? The teachers unions want the money and the kids under their control.
In New York City’s Harlem neighborhood, charter schools are flourishing. They are alternatives to public schools but are still regulated by the state. They are oversubscribed because parents want to choose the best school for their kids. Now, the Democrats want to put a cap on the charter schools because the teachers unions want to warehouse the kids in public schools where a majority of the kids can’t read or do math at grade-level proficiency. In other words, many of the public schools are worse than mediocre. And it’s not for lack of money. New York spends more than $20,000 per child in public schools.
Did I mention that in nearly every one of these cases across the country, the Democrats blocking private and Catholic school options went to private schools themselves? Or they send their kids to private schools. But poor black kids aren’t allowed that same opportunity? These are hypocrites with a capital H.
There’s a cruel historic irony here. Sixty years ago this summer, Alabama Gov. George Wallace stood before the doors of schools to prevent black children from attending the schools with white children. He was trying to preserve the stain of segregation.
Today, Democrats are employing the same tactic to keep minority kids from attending excellent schools. Why? They say that school choice will hurt public schools or cause more segregation.
Wrong on both counts. Monopolies are always bad for consumers and competition improves service. Education choice requires public schools to compete. Would you get good and friendly service if there were only one restaurant in town?
Instead of draining public schools of money, studies show that per-pupil funding rises when some kids take advantage of vouchers to attend alternative schools. Charter and Catholic schools tend to be, in most cases, more racially diverse than inner-city public schools.
I’m a parent of five boys, so I know that each of my kids has different skills, interests, behavior issues and attention spans. To warehouse them all in the same schoolroom is madness. Schools should be tailored toward the kids and serve their interests — not those of the $1 trillion a year public-school-industrial complex.
More importantly, as an economist, my biggest worry about America’s future is what happens when kids are graduating without being able to read their diplomas and with no useful skills. There are hundreds of schools around the country where not a single child can pass a basic math or reading test.
That’s an economic, civil rights and national security tragedy. Shame on Democratic leaders, and some Republicans, too, for putting their own political ambitions ahead of our nation’s children.
Stephen Moore is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and a co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. His latest book is “Govzilla: How the Relentless Growth of Government Is Devouring Our Economy.”
Right now, there’s a growing conflict between whether our schools should be focused primarily on academic instruction or social instruction.
Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), stated recently that teachers must assume the role of “Social Justice Warriors” in classrooms across the country. The National Education Association (NEA), another very large teachers’ union, urged the U.S. Justice Department to label concerned parents as “Domestic Terrorists” in an attempt to silence their objections. It’s clear that these teachers’ unions simply want to dismiss parents as being unworthy of advocating for their own children.
But parents need to be involved in the education of their children now more than ever.
Just look at what’s going on with Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman. She was recently sued for advertising links to chat rooms where minors discuss sex and gender with adults present and without parents necessarily knowing.
Then, there’s Chandler Education Association Union President Katie Nash, who is on video at a Chandler Unified School District Board (CUSD) meeting actively promoting the teaching of White Supremacy Theory, the 1619 Project, and “Anti-Racism” programs typically derived from Critical Race Theory (CRT).
What does any of this have to do with academic instruction? Nothing.
But it’s being pushed in our schools, and while it can be tempting to blame teachers for this, we need to be careful. Most teachers should be considered as dedicated and trustworthy professionals. Instead, this is a failure of union leadership and their minions who have lost interest in academic education in favor of a growing obsession with political power. What has been the result? Declining academic scores across the country.
Of course, all of this is in direct contradiction with Arizona statute, which clearly defines these social activities as fundamental rights reserved to parents to be directed by them in the home. But these teachers’ unions don’t seem to care. They’d rather do whatever it takes to usurp these parental rights—even if it means lower academic scores.
Is Academic Proficiency Now a Secondary Consideration?
As social instruction grows, academic proficiency suffers. Consider a recent CUSD presentation of a “Portrait of a Learner” program, which described several social aspirations for students, yet somehow omitted any reference to academic proficiency. Shouldn’t we expect academics to be the primary focus of something that involves “Learning”? Either that, or you would think it would at least push students toward developing practical job skills training.
This continued lack of focus on academic proficiency is resulting in a continued decline in student test scores across the state. There does not seem to be any comprehensive plan to recover from this.
The most recent shiny new program is called the Whole Child Concept. But it appears to do nothing more than broaden the scope of the Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) programs already embedded in school curriculum.
Parent Flight
One of the unintended consequences of this movement to focus on social instruction is “Parent Flight” to other educational alternatives such as charter schools, private schools, and homeschooling. The recent expansion of the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program in Arizona now allows for parents to choose from these alternatives over unsatisfactory district schools.
But as you might expect, teachers’ unions and their political arm, RedforEd, vigorously oppose this legislative expansion, claiming that it defunds schools. But what they won’t tell you is that it clearly does not defund a student’s educational opportunities. Equally important, it enhances a parent’s choice as to where they believe their children would receive the best education.
The program has been so popular that parents already overwhelmed the website in an effort to get out of undesirable district schools. Yet somehow it does not seem to occur to opponents of ESAs that, if they had district schools that were satisfactory to parents, then those parents probably would not even consider moving their kids to another competing educational alternative.
Quasi-Religious Woke Doctrine?
Perhaps what’s most frustrating about the growing social instruction in our schools is that, for years, our nation has been gradually removing religious (mostly Christian) influences from our public schools. In fact, it feels like the First Amendment right to “Freedom of Religion,” which was fundamental to the first European immigrants to this continent, has gradually been reinterpreted by the Left to mean “Freedom from Religion.”
But you can’t help but notice how certain aspects of woke doctrine seem to have become “articles of faith” that cannot be questioned by anyone without facing severe social backlash. It’s clear that Christian doctrine has been suppressed in schools and replaced by Secular Humanism, the belief that humanity is capable of morality and self-fulfillment without belief in God, and the more extreme Cultural Marxism, the Neo-Marxist movement seeking to apply critical theory to matters of family composition, gender, race, and cultural identity within Western society.
If teachers’ unions want to apply the “Freedom from Religion” doctrine in public schools, they should also apply a “Freedom from Extremist Political Doctrine” as well. It’s the only way to ensure our schools remain on neutral ground for political ideology, and it leaves social development at home with the child’s parents—where it should be.
Teacher Opt-Out?
Finally, along with our First Amendment rights comes a prohibition on “compelled speech,” which prevents a person from being forced, under threat or duress, to say things they don’t really believe in. But we hear regular reports of teachers being bullied and harassed by other “activist” colleagues to force them to go along with their extreme Leftist political doctrine. Many teachers simply comply because they are concerned about having to work in a hostile environment or having their livelihoods threatened.
This implies that there is some sort of informal “political test” for teachers in our schools. It is often enforced by aggressive colleagues who are usually associated with a teachers’ union. The apparent message is: “comply and be welcome, or dissent and be ostracized.” It is no wonder teachers are under such workplace stress because of these implied threats.
However, there is a recent report of one brave, principled teacher, who, in looking over the daily SEL lesson, simply said, “we are not going to do this today” and put the controversial assignment aside. So, if parents have the right to “opt-out” their children from the presentation of controversial subject matter, that same rule needs to be extended to teachers who do not believe in these social lessons or deem them inappropriate for the children in their class. It’s time to give these teachers an “opt-out” choice as well.
In conclusion, here are a few ways we can start to clean up our public schools:
Return the primary focus of schools to academic instruction rather than social instruction.
Reduce the influence of the politically biased teachers’ unions.
Protect parents’ rights to direct the social upbringing of their children.
Prohibit political and social ideologies from being established in schools.
Protect teachers from being compelled to present controversial materials that they do not believe in.
Kurt Rohrs is a candidate for the Chandler Unified School District Governing Board. You can find out more about his campaign here.
Teachers’ unions appear to have run into a buzz saw. On October 25, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten tweeted enthusiastic support for a Washington Post article titled “Parents claim they have the right to shape their kids’ school curriculum. They don’t.”
By November 6, her message had drastically changed. “Parents have to be involved in their kids’ education. They must have a voice. At the same time, we have to teach kids how to—not what to—think.” Sure, Randi.
In the interval, there had been a reality shock: the Virginia governor’s election, this time with an electorate that had wised up. Parents had been appalled when they remotely observed the overtly racist curriculum their children were being taught and then shocked at the blowback, including being charged with “white supremacy,” when they protested.
Moreover, they now realized the unions were responsible for the damaging school COVID shutdowns. Weingarten herself pressured legislatures and school districts into closures. Unions influenced the Biden CDC into adding new and impossible conditions for reopening. They threatened outright strikes if school districts tried to reopen for the 2020-2021 school year.
Voters were not amused. When Terry McAuliffe vowed, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” the damage was done. Polls showed challenger Glenn Youngkin gaining 15-17 points among parents in the last weeks of the campaign. Education-oriented voters swung from favoring McAuliffe by 33 points to a nine-point Youngkin advantage.
Weingarten’s response was that the reports had all been a massive misunderstanding, that it was actually the teachers’ unions that had tried to reopen the schools. Her pathetic gaslighting attempts were ignored.
The longtime symbiotic relationship between the teachers’ unions and the Democrats may be fraying. They both earn the other’s loyalty. According to OpenSecrets, 99.72% of the AFT contributions in 2020 went to Democrats. Fully 97% of AFT donations have gone to Democrats since 1990.
In Virginia, McAuliffe bagged $1 million from the unions. AFT ran ads for McAuliffe, and Weingarten personally stumped for him.
Their money isn’t wasted. As governor, McAuliffe had vetoed nine school choice bills. This year, he affirmed on CNN, “I will never allow [school choice] as governor.” Nationwide, Democrats have been able to stymie the movement for universal school choice in spite of growing majorities in favor.
The Democrats are in a sticky situation now. According to RealClearOpinion research, voters’ support for school choice surged from 64% to 74% in just the last year. Another poll showed 78% approve of Education Savings Accounts, the most comprehensive method for funding parental choice directly.
Voters have expressed particular contempt for politicians (and educators) who send their own children to private schools but deny the same privilege to less fortunate children. 62% of voters said they would be less likely to vote for such a hypocrite.
Terry McAuliffe, for one, got the message. The veto king sent his five children to private schools. When asked about it on NBC this year, his verbatim quote was “Chuck, we have a great school system in Virginia. Dorothy and I have raised our five children.” You’ve gotta love it.
Democrats are stuck with a policy that is not only morally and educationally wrong but is a political loser. Advocates for children and parents should seize the opportunity to not only win some elections but to fundamentally reform the structure of education in America into a system that serves students and parents, not bureaucracies.
Teachers’ unions must be publicly held accountable. These organizations which relentlessly pound a “for the children” theme have a wretched record of not promoting their educational interests.
In the 1960s, when the unions first rose to influence, about $3,000 (inflation-adjusted) dollars were spent per student. Today, that number is over $13,000. Yet academic achievement and the ethnic gap have stubbornly failed to improve.
Not all of the spending increase has gone to teacher salaries, and not all of the fault for academic failure is theirs. But as the dominant influence in education policy for the last half-century, unions must bear major responsibility for the dismal outcomes.
Parents’ rights advocates: take heart. This is our time.
