teachers unions who hold American children and their education hostage. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan stood up to the air traffic controllers union who
est in the US. That huge power and influence affords teachers unions the ability to set policy — emails between the National Education Association (NEA) and the White House basically show the NEA crafting national policy during COVID. In addition to these mammoth-sized liberal school districts, the teacher’s unions therein constitute approx- imately 10 percent of the Demo- cratic National Committee delegates, contributing over $50 million annu- ally to the Democratic party. If you put it in economic or antitrust terms, larger school districts wield such enormous, outsized leverage and control that it might even make sense to break them up into smaller districts. A Brookings study of over 250 districts found that “school districts with lengthier collective bargaining agreements were less likely to start the fall 2020 semester with in-per- son instruction, were less likely to ever open for in-person instruction during the fall semester, and spent more weeks overall in distance learn- ing.” That suggests it may be time for governors and state legislators to get much smarter about crafting state laws on collective bargaining. At a minimum, it is clear that doing nothing about the enormous abuse of power by teachers unions is not an option. Republicans like Rep. Virginia Foxx now in charge of the House would be wise to use the new power they have to fight back. Palmer Schoening Palmer Schoening is part of AMAC Action’s advocacy team in Washington, DC. He is a graduate of Hillsdale College and George Mason University’s School of Public Policy.
threatened to go on strike, firing nearly all 13,000 of the striking workers. In 1919, Pres- ident Calvin Coolidge sided with the Boston
Police Department, which fired its striking police officers. Those were defining moments, not just in their respective presidencies, but for the nation and organized labor as a whole. Action like this is not something President Biden seems capable of, much less will- ing to do. Simply put: teachers unions are the strongest financial and political backers of Democrats. The primary reason why school unions have so much outsized power is a matter of size and jurisdiction. For instance, New York City Public Schools is not only the largest school district in the nation, it’s the largest in the world (New York City is the elev- enth-largest city in the world, to put it into context). NYCPS has 1.1 million students and over 75,000 teachers in over 1,700 schools, with a budget of $34 billion. NYCPS is 50 percent larger than the second-largest school district, Los Angeles County Unified School District, and twice as large as Chicago Public Schools, the third-larg-
found. Other data show 49 percent of students across America failed to hit reading benchmarks in the winter of the 2021–22 school year. The damage was concentrated among the most vulnerable students, with the pandemic years erasing much of the very real progress among black and Hispanic students in K–12 schools through the 1990s and 2000s.” Other studies are showing that the unnec- essary lockdowns have had serious mental health impacts on children as well. Teachers unions continue to put themselves first and children last. Perhaps it will take bold and decisive leadership to rein in these radical
34 • AMAC Magazine
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