Whether or not President Biden stays at the top of the Democrats’ ticket, America’s children will continue to suffer if he, Kamala Harris, or any member of their party holds on to the White House after November’s election.
That’s because every leading Democratic contender remains openly beholden to teachers’ unions at the expense of our kids’ education.
Test scores for public-school kids across the country have tanked, and throwing more money at them has done nothing to improve the quality of learning.
Meanwhile, outright leftist indoctrination has become prevalent in schools across the country.
A second Biden/Harris term would bring us more of the same.
As the American Federation of Teachers holds its annual conference in Houston, expect to hear more of the deranged politicized rhetoric that was spewed at the gathering of its sister union earlier this month.
“NEA, we have to win all the things!” shouted National Education Association President Becky Pringle in an unhinged rant at its meeting in Philadelphia.
“All the things! All the things! All the things! We must win all the things!” Pringle shrieked as she pounded on the podium with her fists.
Social media had fun mocking her theatrics, but Pringle’s outburst overshadowed the damaging content presented in the rest of her speech and throughout the conference.
The NEA “winning all the things” necessarily means losses for our kids.
“We worked hard to rid ourselves of a tyrannical, deceitful, and corrupt White House,” the openly political Pringle boasted of her union’s efforts against former president Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
Is it good that someone with so much control over our kids’ learning is such an outrageous partisan?
“But … the seeds that were sown during that horrible season continue to germinate,” she railed.
Pringle’s main beef against Republicans is their support for school vouchers, and the dastardly idea that money spent on a child’s education should follow the child instead of being sunk into failing public schools.
“We will fight privatization! We will fight vouchers! We will fight any and all schemes to drain resources from our beloved public schools,” Pringle yelled.
But if the public schools were so “beloved,” parents wouldn’t need vouchers to get their kids a good education.
In fact, it’s the nonsense pushed by Pringle and by Randi Weingarten, her counterpart at the AFT, that has parents yanking their kids out of public schools in the first place.
Public schools have faced a sharp enrollment drop in the last several years, with some 4% of kids nationally exiting the system. In some states, the number is as high as 8%.
If Pringle and Weingarten are wondering why, perhaps they should consult a mirror.
AFT members will be voting on a full slate of inane political resolutions, including one calling for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.
Surely the parties involved in this faraway war have been waiting anxiously for instructions from an American teachers’ union.
If this is the kind of nonsense these teachers waste time on in their conferences, imagine what they do in their classrooms.
Sex and gender is another teachers-union obsession.
An AFT webinar posted this month promised to clarify “gender identity, sex assigned at birth and gender expression” for teachers who find these concepts “super confusing” — while instructing them to address such notions with even the youngest students.
The webinar, “Beyond Rainbows & Pronouns: Gender Identity in Elementary School,” awards industry-required professional-development credits to the teachers who complete it.
The unions always claim they don’t set school curriculum — but they clearly inculcate our kids’ teachers with leftist thought.
Parents who think 6-year-olds shouldn’t be brainwashed about gender identity should have the option to get their kids out of Pringle and Weingarten’s indoctrination factories.
And Democrats should be frequently called out on their continued support for these powerful leftist interest groups.
The teachers’ unions have been granted tremendous sway in Joe Biden’s White House, where they are treated as heroes instead of the villains they are.
Pringle visited the White House at least 24 times between 2021 and early 2024, Fox News reported recently.
Weingarten, who was infamously allowed to meddle with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention policies to keep American schools closed in the early months of Biden’s tenure, was invited to the White House immediately after he took office.
Kids suffered terrible, long-term learning losses because of the power Weingarten wielded over Joe Biden.
Now, every minute spent talking about Biden’s cognitive decline is a minute not spent discussing his disastrous policies and alliances.
Biden shouldn’t lose this election because he’s a confused old man propped up by his political allies and media friends; he should lose it because his policies on the economy, on foreign policy, and especially on education have been a disaster.
Should Biden step aside?
Maybe.
Should Democrats start to care more about the well-being of America’s children and less about special interest groups like the AFT and NEA?
Definitely.
Karol Markowicz is the author of the book “Stolen Youth.”