Teachers unions and political power

John Stossel: Teachers Unions Fail Science. Stossel echoes Thomas Sowell (link) on the effects of poor public school education on black American children. The following in italics are quotes from the article.

Is your child's school open now?

Probably not — because teachers unions say that reopening would "put their health and safety at risk."

Closed schools hurt low-income students most because they have fewer learning alternatives. The privileged get around union restrictions.

Almost all of California's government-run schools are closed, but California Governor Gavin Newsom sends his kids to a private school that stayed open.

Union demands include all sorts of things unrelated to teacher safety. The Los Angeles union demands: defunding the police, a moratorium on charter schools, higher taxes on the wealthy and "Medicare for All."

It's revealing that government-run schools fight to stay closed, while most businesses — private schools, restaurants, hair salons, gyms, etc., fight to be allowed to open.

Why is that? [Heritage Foundation's Lindsey] Burke points out that government schools "receive funding regardless of whether or not they reopen."

So, union workers get paid even when they don't work. Not working seems to be a big union goal.

Yet, the teachers unions keep winning. They will win more now that Democrats control the federal government. Congress' last stimulus package forbids any funds to be used to expand school choice: no "vouchers, tuition tax credit programs, education savings accounts, scholarship programs, or tuition assistance programs."

So, students lose. Parents lose. Taxpayers lose. America loses.

Unions win.

Thomas Sowell: Is Truth Irrelevant?

Thomas Sowell: Is Truth Irrelevant?  Thomas Sowell notes how many noticed the riots which took place January 5, but paid so little attention to the riots that took place in various cities across the country last year. For too many people, especially in the media, what is right and wrong, true or false, depends on who it helps or hurts politically. Too many media people who are supposed to be reporters act as if they are combatants in political wars. The following in italics are quotes from Sowell's article.

Someone once said that, in a war, truth is the first casualty. That has certainly been so in the media — and in much of academia as well. 

Unfortunately, too many American educational institutions — from elementary schools to universities — have become indoctrination centers. The riots that swept across the country last year are fruits of that indoctrination and the utter disregard for other people's rights that accompanied those riots.

At the heart of that indoctrination is a sense of grievance and victimhood when others have better outcomes — which are automatically called "privileges" and never called "achievements," regardless of what the actual facts are.

Facts don't matter in such issues, any more than facts mattered when smearing [Abraham] Lincoln.

Any "under-representation" of any group in any endeavor can be taken as evidence or proof of discriminatory bias. But those who argue this way cannot show us any society — anywhere in the world, or at any time during thousands of years of recorded history — that had all groups represented proportionally in all endeavors. 

Whites are "under-represented" in the NBA and NFL. About 80% of players in both organizations  are black. Is that due to discriminatory bias?

Thomas Sowell: A Vote at the Crossroads

Thomas Sowell: A Vote at the Crossroads

Thomas Sowell says how Democrats will take advantage of its political power in the Senate and beyond now that they have won the two Senate seats for Georgia. When he wrote this, the seats were not yet decided. The following in italics are quotes from Sowell's article.

Senate Democrats' leader, Senator Charles Schumer, has already announced what he has in store, if the Democrats get a majority in the Senate. So has President-elect Joe Biden. And it goes way beyond specific policies. It includes institutional changes that can be permanent, and almost guarantee one-party rule in this country, as far out as the eye can see.

Among the groups likely to be hurt most by Democrats' dominance of both houses of Congress and the White House is the black population that has been the most loyal to the Democrats for many generations.

There is no more vital interest of black Americans than the education of black children. The whole future of the race depends on the quality of that education, more than on any other single factor.

In many public schools in low-income minority neighborhoods, most of the students cannot pass tests in mathematics or English. In some ghetto schools, nobody passed either test.

When charter schools succeed where traditional public schools fail, that is welcome news to everyone to whom black education matters. But it is bad news to failing public school bureaucrats and to teachers unions, since charter schools attract students from unionized public schools.

These politicians are almost all Democrats. President-elect Biden has already assured teachers unions that there will be no more federal money for charter schools.