1. Students stopped learning during COVID. We’ve failed them.
2. Democrats have too often responded to learning loss by lowering standards.
3. We’re losing our best teachers. Lawmakers aren’t doing enough about it.
4. Public schools are as segregated and unequal today as they were before Brown. The problem is worse in Northern and blue cities.
5. The parents of students of color and working-class kids who attend failing schools increasingly blame Democrats.
The article tends to downplay teachers unions as a factor contributing to these problems, I am inclined to assign the unions more blame. With that caveat, I find the article mostly on target and definitely worth your time.
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Another relevant factor for which I can see no handy fixes is this. Equal employment rights for women (which I support) have opened many other opportunities to smart women who once became teachers when that was one of about three pink collar careers (teaching, nursing, clerical) open to them.
Today bright, hard-working women who would once have become teachers are instead becoming attorneys, physicians, airline pilots, professors, and executives. Dumbing down those becoming teachers has had the expected deleterious effect.
Full disclosure: The other DrC is a former excellent public school teacher who became a professor. Academia’s gain was, perforce, K-12’s loss.
