Yesterday I wrote about the arrogance of teachers’ unions and their bosses who have a death grip on the public school system and they’re using it to destroy what’s left of the educational system.
Here’s an excerpt from the profile of the UTLA boss.
UTLA’s headquarters was besieged by protesters. Nearly 100 parents gathered outside the union’s office tower at Wilshire Boulevard and Berendo Street waving signs (“Cecily Myart-Cruz Doesn’t Care about Our Kids”) and chanting slogans (“We demand a seat at the table!”). Some called for Myart-Cruz’s resignation; others, for the dismantling of UTLA altogether. Still others simply asked that their voices be heard. All of them were angry and upset.
Flyers for the event started circulating a week before the rally, and during our interview, Myart-Cruz examined one of them. It was a parody of the sci-fi thriller Total Recall, with Myart-Cruz’s head photoshopped on top of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s body, with smaller images of other players swirling around her—Newsom, L.A. superintendent of schools Austin Beutner, the seven members of the L.A. Board of Education. Myart-Cruz gave the flyer a brief, rueful glance, then smiled. “I love that my picture is the biggest one,” she said. “But here’s the trouble: You can recall the Governor. You can recall the school board. But how are you going to recall me?”
There’s one answer here.
By the numbers: Nearly 2.6 million kids have switched from traditional school to homeschooling since the pandemic began, according to a new report from the Bellwether Education Partners, commissioned by the Walton Family Foundation.
Now the total number of homeschooled kids sits at about 5 million. According to census data, more than 11% of U.S. households are now homeschooling.
And it’s not just white families who are moving to homeschooling: 9.7% of white families with kids have pulled out of traditional education, as have 12.1% of Hispanic families, 8.8% of Asian families and 16.1% of Black families.
Consider that a recall.
Just leaving the system doesn’t make the unions go away. Ask Orthodox Jewish parents in places like East Ramapo where the vast majority of children go to religious schools, but lefties, unions, and identity politics activists (along with the media) treat any effort to reduce the huge and expensive school system as a racist hate crime. But it does point the way to what’s possible.
As the system gets worse, more parents, many of them minority, will leave the broken system. And the more people opt out, the harder the system will have to yell to justify its greedy and corrupt existence.
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