Teachers' unions...don't tell you what to teach. Overtly. But they are dominated by socialist, anti-American shrews. You claim that has no effect? That is patently stupid.
Covid is no excuse for what the Teachers' unions did to American public schools. Private and parochial schools continued classes with reasonable adjustments, and the Angel of Academic Death passed right over them. Covid was just an excuse for the teachers' unions to demand more free stuff and concessions.
When citing examples of extra-curricular activities you cite the arts club, chess club, and other quasi-academic clubs but ignore the sports teams, which is all you ever write about. NO OTHER COUNTRY wastes its time and resources on school-based sports, and this goes especially for the countries with the best academics. Kids who want to participate in sports in those countries do so in CLUB SPORTS or in playgrounds. If the Emperor of Education outlawed schools sports tomorrow, clubs would spring up like weeds all over the fruited plain. It is not really necessary to prove that school sports are bad when we have a whole world of examples where they have no school sports, and virtually every civilized country gets better academic outcomes without them. As for parents more concerned about the HS football team than academics, open your ******* eyes. How many newspaper pages are filled with HS sports coverage compared to the three column-inches devoted to academics?
Private, parochial, and charter schools ALL have community outreach programs to make it possible for kids from poor families to attend. If you live your life (as a parent) by rational rules of behavior, it is usually possible to access a better education than offered by your crappy neighborhood school.
I was raised in the Black community, thank you very much. And between 1-12, getting a BA, getting a JD, and taking 30 credits toward an MBA, I spent plenty of years in classrooms. I was deeply involved in my own son's education - admittedly in a "Lily White" suburban school - and saw the lay of the land there. If you wanted your kid to do well, you had to spend a lot of time with them or hire tutors to supplement what they were learning in school.
I have no doubt that spending time as a teacher gives one insights that are not available to the general public, but the results are what they are. The U.S. spends more on public education than ever before and the results get more and more embarrassing by the year. It simply will not do to constantly claim that critics don't know what they are talking about; the people in the System don't know what the hell they are doing, as demonstrated by the results.
Happy Thanksgiving.
