Union Knows Best or Mother Knows Best? | Gary Bauer

Weekly Dobson Policy Center Update

Gary Bauer, Senior Vice President of Public Policy

The National Education Association (NEA) is one of the two major labor unions representing America’s teachers. The other one is the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Both unions are far left in their guiding ideology and in their hostility to safeguarding parental rights in the education of our children.

That leftist ideology was on full display over the weekend when the NEA tweeted, “Educators love their students and know better than anyone what they need to learn and thrive.”

We disagree with that sentiment. Parents are children’s first and most important teachers. They know better than anyone what their children need. It is disturbing that the teachers unions continue to try to shove parents to the back of the school bus.

Relations between parents and the teachers unions deteriorated greatly during the shutdown of many schools during COVID. They worsened further when it was discovered that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was “clearing” their classroom COVID advice through the unions. So much for “following the science.” The resultant delay in reopening schools has severely damaged reading and math scores.

The parental revolt against the politicization of the public schools continues to gain momentum. During November’s elections over 100 school board seats were “flipped” from pro-union to pro-parent candidates.