For decades, America’s government-run schools have failed to fulfill their fundamental job of educating the nation’s youth.
Case in point: the United States ranked 38th in the Program for International Student Assessment mathematics scores in 2018.
Moreover, stories abound of government-run schools in which not one student can read, write, or perform math and/or science at grade-level.
Despite Herculean efforts on behalf of the federal government to correct this problem, such as President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind program and President Barack Obama’s Race to the Top, things are actually getting worse, not better.
Fortunately, more Americans are recognizing that government-run schools are not their only option.
According to a new report from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, “During the 2020-21 school year, charter school enrollment grew 7%, the largest increase in half a decade.”
Further, as the report notes, “Nearly 240,000 new students enrolled in these innovative, student-centered public schools, despite a sharp decrease in overall public school enrollment during the same period. Of the 42 states evaluated, 39 experienced charter school enrollment increases, while only three saw modest decreases. By comparison, district school enrollment dropped precipitously in every state.”
So, during the ill-fated 2020-21 school year, a mass exodus occurred at public schools while charter schools experienced their highest growth rate in years.
There are several reasons for this shift, yet one cannot dismiss the double whammy that COVID-19 and critical race theory played in this shift.
First, throughout the pandemic, most government-run schools shut down in-person learning, despite ample evidence that COVID-19 poses little threat to young people. What’s more, data show that children are highly unlikely to spread COVID-19, making the mass shut downs totally pointless.
Without a doubt, millions of parents realized that government-run schools did everything they could to avoid offering in-person learning, while at the same time the vast majority of private and charter schools remained open for in-person learning the entire time.
Moreover, public teacher unions lobbied the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on COVID-19 guidance, pressuring the CDC to comply with its un-scientific, nakedly political agenda.
Second, as government-run schools remained closed for in-person learning for months, they also decided to introduce critical race theory (CRT) into the curriculum.
Ironically, due to the fact that in-person learning was replaced with online classes at the vast majority of public schools, parents became aware of the radical ideology being pushed in government-run schools.
The hyper focus on CRT and its close cousins (The New York Times’ 1619 Project and the Zinn Education Project) was definitely an eye-opener for parents throughout America.
As polls show, CRT is not popular with parents. And it should not be, considering that it is a direct rebuke of Martin Luther King’s wish for America to be a place where people are judged upon the content of their character, not the color of their skin.
Thankfully, most Americans understand that CRT and its offshoots are the epitome of racism, in which students are brainwashed into believing Marxian notions of oppressed v. oppressors. And, they want nothing to do with it, pulling their kids from indoctrination factories wherein CRT is pushed while math, science, reading, and writing take a backseat.
For several years, school choice has been a back-burner issue. However, this is changing rapidly.
Polls show that Americans, especially black and Hispanic parents, are more receptive than ever to school choice. More and more, parents desire the power to determine where and how their children are educated. The behavior of public teacher unions, government school administrators, and too many teachers over the past 18 months has only accelerated the push by parents to ensure that they have the ability to choose which school their child attends.
As a former public high school teacher who witnessed the early stages of classroom indoctrination (I taught well before CRT became mainstream), I am overjoyed that parents are becoming aware of the fact that government-run schools have become cesspools of corruption.
As they say, you must first become aware of the problem, before you can solve it.