Not a single state had universal school choice prior to 2021. In the past three years, eleven states have enacted it. This is a monumental achievement — and more victories for America’s children are imminent. School choice advocates are grateful to the power-hungry teachers unions, which overplayed their hand and sparked a parent revolution.
The teachers unions-induced school closures harmed students academically, mentally, and emotionally, with virtually no reduction in overall coronavirus transmission or child mortality. Parents were understandably furious at the public schools that had broken faith with them during their time of need, and they weren’t going to just sit there and take it.
How did the unions respond to efforts to exert more control? By attacking parents, of course. No, it wasn’t the virus that needed to be defeated. It was you, mom and dad.
The unions publicly smeared parents who had the temerity to suggest that schools should do their jobs. In Chicago, home of the nation’s third-largest public school system, the local union took to Twitter to demonize those who favored reopening schools: “The push to reopen schools is rooted in sexism, racism and misogyny,” tweeted the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) on Dec. 6, 2020.
A few months later, a union member in California named Damian Harmony would say “hold my beer” to the CTU by smearing parents who wanted schools reopened for their supposed “cynical, pearl-clutching, faux-urgency, ableist, structurally white-supremacist hysteria.” That same month, the United Teachers of Los Angeles union called California’s
