Teachers’ unions should stop claiming credit for COVID classroom wins

After holding schools hostage during the heights of the pandemic, the American Federation of Teachers is now trying to rewrite history, desperately scrambling to deflect blame for the alarming decline in educational standards. The Programme for International Student Assessment recently released a report that found US student test scores are down 13 points compared to where they were in 2018.

Declines in math were among the “lowest ever measured.” Instead of addressing students’ declining ability to compete in a global marketplace and committing to getting them back on track , AFT President Randi Weingarten shamelessly asserted a total lie that “in person learning is where kids do best, which is why educators and their unions worked so hard to reopen US schools for safe in person learning beginning back in April 2020.” In what universe did the national teacher unions work tirelessly to reopen schools? This is the teachers’ union leadership’s dubious playbook at its best.

By downplaying the role teachers’ unions played in keeping students at home, they deny the hurt they caused so many — families, struggling students, and teachers who wanted more for their classrooms. In the fall of 2020, Weingarten labeled attempts to reopen schools as “reckless, callous, cruel”‘ and even threatened a strike, ominously declaring “nothing is off the table.” The Chicago Teachers Union unabashedly joined the chorus, attributing the push to reopen schools to “sexism, racism and misogyny.” They even walked out for five days in 2022 and threatened to walk out in 2021 to protest in person learning.

How convenient for them to now create an alternate history. The unions’ purported concern for “the safety of the school community“ contradicts their actions in keeping schools close. The unions ignored the devastating effects on academic, social, and physical health from remote learning, which disproportionately harmed poor children and the children of color they claimed to champion.

The COVID 19 crisis laid bare the inadequacies of the traditional public education system as hindered by bureaucracy, outdated traditions, collective bargaining agreements, and unwarranted union interference. There is a reason US reading scores have been plummeting since 2018 — and math scores have declined since peaking in 2009 on the global assessment.

Rather than adapting and innovating in real time, traditional education institutions failed miserably. They shamelessly exploited the COVID pandemic, securing an unprecedented $190 billion plus from the federal government for school district spending . In Chicago, while school campuses were fully or partially closed for 17 months, they continued collecting local school property taxes and state aid.

Weingarten, AFT, and other teachers unions across the nation haven’t stopped wreaking havoc since schools reopened. They’ve advocated for a retreat from “high stakes testing,” jeopardizing educational standards and opportunities for students. Chicago Public Schools, mirroring this trend, is transitioning to a “soft” scoring and assessment system that diminishes the focus on student outcomes, echoing a disturbing return to the era of inflated grades, social promotion, and the resulting student decline such policies inevitably deliver.

More recently, teachers’ unions have worked overtime to oppose school choice, including public school choice and charter schools. Weingarten has gone as far as to compare school choice advocates to segregationists. Her colleague, Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates, characterized demands for greater school choice as “the encroachment of fascists,” all while sending her child to a private Catholic school.

Teacher unions have reason to fear competition from charter and private schools. Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes tracked charter school outcomes over 15 years, tracking some 2 million charter students nationally, to conclude: “Charter schools produce superior student gains despite enrolling a more challenging student population.” Moreover, “Black and Hispanic students in charter schools advance more than their [traditional public school] peers by large margins in both math and reading.” If American students are to compete on a global scale, the evidence is pointing more and more toward private and charter schools leading the way.

Instead of rising to the challenge, teachers’ unions have resorted to squashing their threats and changing the rules. Putting their own needs first, they demonstrate a blatant disregard for the well being and prospects of the very students they claim to champion. In the face of the damning national and international report cards, Weingarten and the teachers unions find themselves with a lot of explaining to do.

Their obstinate refusal to acknowledge systemic COVID 19 failures and their relentless efforts to deflect blame only compound the crisis facing the education system. The time for accountability and genuine commitment to students’ well being is long overdue. Paul Vallas is a policy advisor for the Illinois Policy Institute.

He ran for Chicago mayor in 2023 and was previously budget director for the city and CEO of Chicago Public Schools..