The greatest casualty of the pandemic era is, without question, America’s public education system. Shuttering public schools in the first panicked days of March 2020 was perhaps understandable. However, many schools—such as those my children attend in Ann Arbor, Michigan—failed to open the following year. Schools closed in defiance of any reasonable accounting of the massive harms and non-existent benefits.
Worse, parents (including my wife and me) who advocated to get their kids’ schools open were subject to abuse and harassment on social media, where we were called “teacher killers” and racists. This abuse was tacitly encouraged by teachers’ unions, which adopted similar rhetoric (“The push to reopen schools is rooted in sexism, racism and misogyny”announced the official Twitter account of the Chicago Teachers’ Union in December 2020) as well as elected school boards, who struggled to hide the obvious contempt they had for parents.
This came as a terrible shock to many who had children in these schools, but especially to lifelong Democrats living in progressive towns and cities. They felt themselves abandoned by institutions they had long trusted and supported without reservation. That trust is gone and unlikely ever to return.
Our medical and scientific institutions have also undermined their credibility over the past two years. Few authority figures were once as trusted as physicians. But our collective view of them will never be the same.
Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.
The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.
When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?