Have teachers unions finally overplayed their hand?

From Mark Perry.

"That’s the title of Jason Riley’s op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal and I hope the answer is a definite Yes! Here’s an excerpt:

Perhaps it doesn’t receive much attention anymore because it’s become so commonplace. The best schools in New York state are again public charter schools. Ho-hum.

According to the most recent data from School Digger, a website that aggregates test score results, 23 of the top 30 schools in New York in 2019 were charters (see chart above). The feat is all the more impressive because those schools sported student bodies that were more than 80% black and Hispanic, and some two-thirds of the kids qualified for free or discount lunches. The Empire State’s results were reflected nationally. In a U.S. News & World Report ranking released the same year, three of the top 10 public high schools in the country were charters, as were 23 of the top 100—even though charters made up only 10% of the nation’s 24,000 public high schools.

We are told constantly by defenders of the education status quo that the learning gap is rooted in poverty, segregation and “systemic” racism. We’re told that blaming traditional public schools for substandard student outcomes isn’t fair given the raw material that teachers have to work with. But if a student’s economic background is so decisive, or if black students need to be seated next to whites to understand Shakespeare and geometry, how can it be that so many of the most successful public schools are dominated by low-income minorities?

……

Covid-19 has exposed just how much control teachers unions have over K-12 education and, by extension, over so much else that affects our everyday lives. Randi Weingarten, head of the 1.7-million-member American Federation of Teachers, wakes up every morning in search of ways to keep children confined to traditional public schools, regardless of their quality. She and her thousands of state and local affiliate unions do this because it is good for their dues-paying members, and those interests come before the students and their families.

A failing school may be a disaster for students, but it still means lots of middle-class jobs for Ms. Weingarten’s members. Remote learning may defy the recommendations of just about every public health expert and frustrate parents who struggle with home schooling and need to get back to work, but it gives Ms. Weingarten enormous leverage to demand better pay and benefits for the employees she represents.

We’ll find out in time if the unions have finally overplayed their hand. The New York Times reported this week on the recent “shift in attitudes toward the unions in affluent suburbs and urban neighborhoods.” Some parents “have moved their children into private schools, which are more likely to be open, or charter schools, which are just as likely to be closed, but in some cases pivoted faster to live, online teaching.” If this is a real trend, it’s overdue. Liberals like to complain about persistent racial inequality, but a decent education is the first step in addressing it, and teachers unions are standing in the way."