Opinion | Big labor unions to blame for America’s education crisis WashTimesOpEd
It’s code red for American education. In recent years, U.S. educational outcomes have taken a nosedive while illiteracy has skyrocketed, in large part due to a pandemic that was needlessly prolonged by the nation’s teachers unions.
The numbers don’t lie, and they are embarrassing. Even before COVID-19, more than half of Americans read at below a sixth grade level. Then came the pandemic and its seemingly endless slew of mandates, with union bosses such as, president of the American Federation of Teachers, stubbornly resisting in-person schooling and then lying about it.
Half of America’s students fell a whole year behind due to pandemic-related restrictions and school closures. While U.S. students have been testing low in comparison with other countries, new scores predictably plummeted even more. Reading comprehension dropped to 1992 levels, and math results fell to record lows. Nearly 4 in 10 eighth graders now fail to grasp basic math concepts.
It’s surely not for lack of investment. Federal, state and local governments spend about $800 billion annually on K-12 education — more than the entire U.S. defense budget. America’s total education expenditure is roughly equivalent to the entire economic output of oil-rich Saudi Arabia, or of Switzerland, the world’s banking haven. Yet the United States can’t even crack the top 10 in global education rankings.
Our road is long indeed, prolonged by unaccountable teachers unions that are appeased and coddled by even more unaccountable politicians. Union officers such as Ms.militantly demand increases in teacher pay that are unrelated to performance while spending decades fighting for a tenure system that makes it nearly impossible to fire teachers who couldn’t get hired at McDonald’s.
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