California teachers unions strike over social issues while students get left behind
Conn Carroll
What if I offered you a retroactive 10% pay raise covering this year, a $5,000 signing bonus, and a 22% pay raise starting next year?
Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?
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It’s not enough for the Oakland Education Association, the teachers union in Oakland, California, however. In addition to extremely generous financial concessions, the OEA is also demanding “common good” goals be included in the union contract, including measures on climate change, shared governance with the school board, and reparations for black students.
“They’ve been telling us all week they couldn’t negotiate common good, and last night, we broke through,” OEA President Ismael Armendariz said after three days of the teachers’ strike. “They told us they could bargain a memorandum of understanding.”
California already has some of the worst public school systems in the country. The no-show rate for students statewide was at a ridiculously high 15% pre-COVID, and it has soared to 30% post-COVID. All that missed schooling has had predictably terrible results on student learning. Over half of students statewide are below grade level in English, and two-thirds of students are below grade level in math. The results are predictably worse for black students, with almost 85% of them failing to meet the state’s math standards.
According to the World Population Review, California now leads the country in adult illiteracy.
Considering the abysmal results of students in California’s public education system, it is not surprising that so many parents opt to take their children out of it entirely. Between 2019 and 2021, California public schools lost 175,761 students. If present trends continue, they will lose another 524,000 students by 2031.
Most parents just want their children to be taught the basics: reading, writing, and arithmetic. But that is not the priority of the teachers unions that control California’s government. Instead of being taught how to read and add, California students are taught about “empire-building and its relationship to white supremacy, racism, and other forms of power and oppression,” in line with the state’s ethnic studies curriculum standards.
No wonder so many parents have already pulled their children out of California’s public schools. And as Oakland’s teachers strike drags along in the name of reparations, I’m sure many more will join them.