The growing movement to give parents the ability to choose where to send their children to school has helped them overcome teachers’ union bottlenecks in education, a school choice advocate told Fox News.
“We’re finally freeing families from the clutches of the teachers’ unions once and for all, and there’s nothing they can do about it,” Corey DeAngelis, senior fellow at the Federation for Children of America, told Fox News.
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He school choice debate it has figured prominently as parents push back against curricular decisions and as more states pass laws offering more educational choices for students. School choice, which allows tax dollars to follow a student rather than a specific school, would free families from the control of teachers unions and allow them to choose an education system that aligns with their values, he said DeAngelis.
Parents are protesting classroom debates on critical race theory and other curricular options in public schools across the country. (fake images)
“The teachers union monopoly wants to force kids to attend the government-run institutions assigned residentially to which they work,” DeAngelis told Fox News. “It’s about maintaining power. It’s about maintaining a monopoly on the minds of other people’s children.”
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“For too long in K-12 education, the only special interests that had any influence were those that represented the employees in the system,” he continued. “But now the children have their own union and are called parents.”
Debates over what topics are appropriate for classroom discussions, such as critical race theory and gender identity, have become flashpoints across the country. Parents have increasingly spoken up at school board meetings to voice their concerns and advocate for a voice in their children’s education.
“School choice is a win for everyone except Randi Weingarten and the teachers’ unions who want to trap their kids in schools that don’t work for them,” DeAngelis said.
DeAngelis blames teachers’ unions for trying to control the minds of our nation’s children by not supporting educational choices for families. (Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)
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Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, previously said that school choice advocates were aiming to privatize and defund public education. He criticized efforts to divert funds from public districts to fund school choice initiatives.
His union did not respond to a request for comment.
That argument is an “admission that they don’t trust the product that they offer,” DeAngelis told Fox News. “Why would giving families a choice defund the public schools you run?”
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Giving parents a choice would not exclude public schools, but would allow for a broader range of options, according to DeAngelis.
“We don’t want to destroy public schools,” he told Fox News. “We want to make them better.”
“When you inject competition into that system, the district begins to allocate more resources to the classroom so that they don’t annoy parents and have to compete for employees,” DeAngelis added.
Math scores experienced their biggest declines in 2022, according to the Nation’s Report Card. Reading scores also fell to levels not seen since 1992 for fourth- and eighth-grade students across the country.
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School choice would also allow disadvantaged children more opportunities to access educational options like private schools that only some families can afford, DeAngelis said.
“Why should they be forced into this one-size-fits-all system?” DeAngelis said. “School choice is an equalizer.”
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Arizona became the first state to pass universal education scholarship accounts for all 1.1 million K-12 students in the state by 2022. Other states, including Iowa, Utah, and Florida, have continued to push choice legislation. of school.
“It’s the teachers unions’ own fault for overreacting and waking up a sleeping giant: parents who just want more of a say in their children’s education,” DeAngelis said.
To listen to DeAngelis’s full interview, click here.
