Collaboration Between CDC and Teachers Union Doesn’t Help Our Kids
Commentary By
Jude Schwalbach is a research associate and project coordinator in education policy at The Heritage Foundation.
When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its school reopening guidance in February, teachers unions lauded the new regulations. But one union’s plaudits likely didn’t come as a surprise to government officials, since it helped write at least two of those guidelines.
The nonprofit watchdog group Americans for Public Trust, through a Freedom of Information Act request, obtained email exchanges between the CDC’s top officials and American Federation of Teachers’ bosses leading up to the February guidance.
Sen. Tim Scott addressed the American people Wednesday night in response to President Joe Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress. The speech received widespread acclaim for Scott’s blunt assessment of the nation’s problems and commonsense solutions for them.
A week earlier, the South Carolina Republican visited The Daily Signal for an exclusive address to attendees of The Heritage Foundation’s annual Leadership Conference. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s news outlet.)
Our conversation covered a range of education-related topics, including school choice, COVID-19, and Scott’s personal passion for the issue of education. A lightly edited transcript follows.
School Vouchers: Myth vs. Fact
Debates around school funding and the best use of public dollars are rife with confusion. Discussion around school vouchers, which provide public funding for private education, seem to be a particular magnet for half-truths or previously disproven claims. The following table gives a few of the most popular myths, and the reality that runs counter.
Myth: When students take a voucher, public school funding is unaffected.
Fact: First, if enough students leave it means teachers will have to be fired. Any talk of the school being “better off” must grapple with that fact.
Second, schools have two types of costs: fixed and variable. Variable costs can be changed quickly, such as the firing of a teacher. Fixed costs remain regardless of whether a student leaves.
Tiffany Dunston is the epitome of an education opportunity success story.
She grew up in a poor neighborhood in Washington, D.C., and became motivated in her own educational journey after her cousin who was going to be the first in the family to attend college was fatally shot at the age of 17.
But after starting out in a public elementary school in Washington, D.C., Dunston had the chance to enroll in a charter school, and later received a scholarship through the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program to attend a private high school in the city, Archbishop Carroll High School.
What Matters More To Biden: Union Bosses Or Poor Children?
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I have a Bureaucrat Hall of Fame to highlight government employees who have turned sloth and overcompensation into an art form, and I have a Moocher Hall of Fame to illustrate the destructive entitlement mindset that exists when politicians pay people to do nothing.
I’m now thinking we also need another Hall of Fame to bring attention to the despicable people who oppose school choice because currying favor with teacher unions is more important than giving poor children an opportunity for a good education.
Some of the charter members would include: