Teachers unions are among the largest donors to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Democrats’ vice presidential candidate, giving over $135,000 to his campaigns for governor and, before that, Congress.
Walz, who once taught high school social studies, sides with teachers unions instead of everyday Minnesotans, some parents say.
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In a frantic attempt to preserve its monopoly over the Miami-Dade County Public Schools, attorneys for the union currently representing the district’s 24,000-plus teachers and support staff are relying on a strategy that has the potential to backfire and leave its members without workplace representation altogether.
On March 18, United Teachers of Dade (UTD), using an argument that would invalidate its own petition, asked a hearing officer with Florida’s Public Employee Relations Commission (PERC) to reject a competing union’s bid to participate in a forthcoming election to determine the bargaining representative for the South Florida educators.
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For years, liberals have scoffed at the idea that standardized testing is the best predictor of academic success. The National Education Association, for instance, claims standardized tests are “both inequitable and ineffective at gauging what students know.” Activists’ campaign against standardized testing — and their assertions that such tests discriminate against “underrepresented minority students” — culminated in the decisions by more than 1,000 colleges to drop their standardized testing requirements.
This week, cold, hard data showed just how foolish those decisions were. The University of Texas at Austin released the academic performance data for students who submitted standardized scores versus those who did not submit such scores. The result is unambiguous: Students who did not submit standardized tests performed drastically worse than students who did submit their scores. The students who did not submit ACT or SAT scores finished the fall 2023 semester with a grade point average 0.86 grade points lower than students who did. This demonstrates an average difference of almost an entire letter grade. Had the University of Texas utilized all applicants’ standardized scores, it very well might have decided against admitting many of those who did not provide their scores. Students who did not provide scores had a median SAT of 1160, markedly lower than that of the students who did provide their scores: 1420. The University of Texas would have been correct in deciding against admitting those students with lower scores given how much better students with a higher average SAT performed academically.
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In just three years, the number of states with universal or near-universal private school choice programs has grown from zero to 10, and the number of students eligible for these programs has increased by 60%. According to the latest ABCs of School Choice – EdChoice’s comprehensive report about all matters pertaining to educational freedom—32 states (plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico) are using school choice as of 2023. Additionally, policymakers in 40 states debated 111 educational choice bills last year alone. Overall, approximately 20 million students—or 36% of all kids—are now eligible for some kind of private-choice program.
But what’s good for children and their families is problematic for the teachers’ unions and their fellow travelers. As such, on January 22—not coincidentally the beginning of National School Choice Week—the Partnership for the Future of Learning released a toolkit, maintaining that “voucher programs are “deeply rooted in segregation, racism, and discrimination.” The PFL, which is comprised of predominantly left-wing outfits—the National Education Association, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Learning Policy Institute, etc.—adds that private schools “do not have necessary accountability measures.”
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