What the Narrative on School Reopenings Has Missed

Despite the attention that teachers unions have generated, surveys show that parents have been reluctant to rush back to in-person instruction.

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For the last several months, the most prominent public commentary related to reopening schools has been mostly incredulous. I can’t believe teachers unions are keeping schools closed! Why in the world won’t schools just follow the science and get students back in classrooms?

This has suggested that local leaders have been making unwise, even indefensible, decisions—caving to interest groups, putting their heads in the sand, and disregarding the needs of kids, families, and communities.

But the high-profile fights between frustrated parents and unions in districts such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Fairfax County, Virginia, paint a distorted picture. It fails to reflect both what has been happening across much of the country and the complex calculations being made by parents. More broadly, our national conversation has given short shrift to pluralism and democracy. We should expect that different areas will come to different conclusions on important matters, and local self-government means different communities’ public institutions will follow different paths.

In truth, decisions about reopening public schools have tracked public opinion far better than you might know. This should come as no surprise, since school districts are democratically controlled. Now that we’ve turned a corner on the pandemic and families are feeling more comfortable about in-person education, we’re almost certain to see rapid growth in the number of schools opening their doors. 

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  1. Avatar photo
    Troy Ault

    I think it’s generally good that decision-making turns out to have mostly tracked local sentiments. What this analysis fails to capture, however, (aside from a possible phraseology problem e.g. “I am satisfied with instruction *given the circumstances* [but might prefer a return to in-person instruction]) is the degree to which the national debate influenced those sentiments both on the front and back ends. In other words, if you’re a parent in an urban, blue district, you’re more likely to have recoiled at Trump’s downplaying of the pandemic and naturally supported the messaging of his opponents without ever considering they might be overcompensating (in Oakland, CA, for instance, I’m still expected to mask while walking my dog with nobody within a 100 ft of me...). Rural and red district, exactly the opposite; even before the teachers’ unions came into the picture this was a tailor-made ‘defend the leader’ culture war front. On the back end, I.e. once the teachers unions were on the scene, the fact that this union narrative fits so neatly into existing red/blue dichotomy and the degree to which it dominated national media coverage all but guaranteed a doubling down by both sides.

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  2. Ben Moser

    Amazing what happens when The Dispatch actually looks at the data of what ppl want....

    I’ve been yammering at the masthead for months that they are being reductive and just want to use this to satiate their anti-union priors...
    This is why I make my students cite evidence. It’s a lot harder to just be wrong.

    I disagree with Smarick about a ton of stuff usually but smart article.

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  3. linda

    My granddaughter started out in Sept fully online. A month ago they started offering hybrid where the kids were in school half days 4 days a week. I was shocked at how few families opted to send their kids back. Out of an elementary school of 500 190 some came back to the classroom. (the school has a dashboard) None of her friends returned. There were some obvious reasons (granny lived with them and had a condition) but most just didn't care to send them back right now. Most of the parents in this district worked or work from home and I think many families just got used to spending the day together doing school and work. Whatever is going on the parents in this district are in no hurry to return.

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    Jessica Hughes

    This speaks well to my family's huge frustration. We are minorities (that is, independent conservatives in a super-duper blue area, Alexandria, Virginia) whose children attend the city's public schools in being incensed that our children's schools are not open for actual in-person learning. Until the pandemic, we were were very satisfied with our children's education, but the school's stance on re-opening - or not reopening - has been awful. We finally transitioned to what our family calls "Zombie Hybrid" 2 weeks ago, where 2 days a week my children go to the school building and Zoom into their virtual classes from there, with teachers still teaching by Zoom from home or teaching the virtual cohort via Zoom in the classroom -- totally nothing like the actual school experience. And our school board and superintendent announced today no changes and they're sticking with 6 feet. Yet, except for a group of about 800 of us on the OpenACPS Facebook group who have been advocating for a safe return-to-school, there has been no other anger or outrage over this situation, which helps proves Smarick's point that the majority of our city is happy with what the city is doing.

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    Svetlana

    My school reopen group has been beating our heads against the wall in a very blue town ... and this article sheds really important light on why we've had so (relatively) little traction. Most families are satisfied! Yeah, like it or lump it, but that's democracy for you :-) And hundreds of families pulled their kids out of public and into local parochial and private schools. It's hard to do that with high schoolers and our junior is still limping along. Hoping for full reopen in the fall or something ...

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    1. Greg Sturges

      Respectfully, I think it's less likely that your school board is intimately familiar with public survey data, and more likely that your blue town has a blue school board whose members are all too receptive to safetyism and overblown fears from teachers' unions. That's been the issue in my Philly suburb.

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      1. Ben Moser

        But literally that’s how democracy works. Elected officials can be dishonest but when it comes to keeping their job they aren’t dumb. If a majority of their constituents wanted schools to be re-opened they would do that. It sucks that you are stuck in a place where the majority disagrees with you but speaking as a liberal I hope that helps build empathy for groups that have been more robustly marginalized than you in this moment.

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        1. Greg Sturges

          Parents never wanted schools closed, so how is it democratic to ignore their wishes? Also, if a representative body has constituents who are overly fearful of a disease, so much so that they wish to enact policies that will harm children--particularly those that are least fortunate--the body should do what's right, not what noisy, ill-informed special interest groups demand. That's how representative democracy is supposed to work.

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            scott

            The 60% of us who are not so interested in the culture war are what this article is about. If all parents wanted schools open, they would be. By "Parents never wanted..." you mean, "I never wanted..." or "The people I hang out with never wanted..." or "The loudmouth at every school board meeting never wanted..." There seems to be a very big misconception of folks on the left and right that literally everybody agrees with them or are wrong about everything. Because they are all stoopid commies and/or the fascists, of course.

            Ya know, I've been trying to be understanding and laid back about this because people are concerned for their kids. I get it, but, really, I'm getting tired of other people telling me what I believe or should believe. What I want or should want and what is best for me and mine. Y'all do you, I'll do me. If you want to send your kiddos to...well, wherever, I really don't care. Maybe you're not like that, Greg, and I shouldn't be irked by the comments I keep seeing on here, but I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say a lot of us are getting tired of this red/blue culture war crap. It's everywhere and it's very annoying.

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      Jessica Hughes

      Me, too -- where are you? I'm in Alexandria, Virginia.

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    Josh Blumenthal

    So many words and not one on the most important question, which is what have we learned from schools that opened?

    Is it proving safe? What is happening to infection rates among students and faculty? How can there be no discussion of those questions?

    All those words and the most important issue was ignored.

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    1. BrianMA

      Another article could address those issues. This one seems like it is just interested in one particular phenomenon. Nothing wrong with having a narrow focus

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        Josh Blumenthal

        I understand, but all that without even a mention of the health effects seemed narrowly focused to the point of being oblivious. That's living deep inside an ivory tower.

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    Jonathan Crymes

    Some of the best commentary I’ve seen on this topic has noted that public opinion among school age parents was very divided and that unions would have been less successful in keeping schools closed had public opinion been more firmly against them. I am agnostic on how unions specifically reacted to COVID and closures but like most of the culture war, much of the “pro/anti union” commentary felt pretty flattened and simplistic to me.

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    1. Greg Sturges

      It wasn't divided where I live. Always over 80% favored in person learning. I live in a blue area, but not deep blue.

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      Aylene Wright

      I think there are certainly some egregious cases of teacher union overreach, such as Fairfax County in VA, Chicago, and some cities in California. NYC schools actually weren't the worst though certainly unions exerted much influence over the plans.

      However the idea that the unions and their supporters basically brainwashed all the parents into going against their own interests, just removes all agency from them. It's basically a variation of the "Democrats are brainwashing Black people and keeping them on the plantation by bribing them with free goodies" talking points.

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        Jonathan Crymes

        Agency is a good point. It seems like some of the comments below are really hung up on how bad teachers unions are. But I take the author’s point that parents were playing a huge (and diverse) role in this.

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    Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

    I think this is one where I'd have to see the survey instrument, and also how they sampled. Living in a rural area, support for hybrid has been modest. At our march school board meeting, over 85% of the families were choosing in-person (five days a week, masked, etc.). That appears consistent with a dozen other school systems in the greater Miami Valley as well.

    I suspect once one controls for how severe Covid hit their community, that will greatly explain enthusiasm for on-line vs. face to face.

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    Kevin Johnson

    I respectfully find publication of this piece bizarre. Most parents like the teachers they know. I have two family members who are unionized teachers. They are good people and have been in the classroom for many months. The issue many of us find scandalous is that major teachers unions, mostly Democratic officials afraid of them, and a cheerleading media have disgustingly lied over and over again striking terror into the public.

    If you tell people open schools will kill teachers, kids, and grandparents, refusing to accept overwhelming evidence that kids and society were better off with kids at school, surveys will reflect this. You see example after example of major unions changing their demands at the last minute to avoid reopenings and public officials, including the CDC, radically changing the definition of “safe.” Most media fail to explain the unconscionable demands from major unions (e.g. remote learning until all kids vaccinated, retrofitting school buildings, no disciplining of teachers who refuse to work, free child care for teachers returning to work.). The false narrative that unions, Dems., and media are only seeking “safety” while constantly changing its definition and ignoring the costs (safety and others) of closures has done terrible damage.

    This is a forum for debate, and it is good to understand all points of view. But using survey data to defend union and other actors’ lies and exaggerations is perverse. Trumpkins defended unconscionable attacks on the last election because “millions believed it had been stolen.” They did so after their relentless campaign of lies and exaggerations to promote this false narrative; major teachers unions (not all, of course) are doing the same.

    Local control is important, as this piece notes. People need to speak out to confront lies and exaggerations from unions and others and to dismiss the very notion that unions have the expertise or authority to decide when schools open (and note how they define “open”; in some cases like DC it includes having kids in class with proctors while teachers stay home and zoom!). They have every right to their say, as does this writer. I hope many Americans will have theirs. If so, public sector unions will face a backlash mirroring what happened to private sector unions decades ago when corruption made the “teamsters” a symbol of the mob, rather than of its hard working members.

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      Aylene Wright

      I don't see where Mr. Smarick is defending or excusing anyone's "lies and exaggerations" in this piece. He's been involved in the school choice/ reform movement for decades and is far from a union shill. I am sure he'd agree there are some locales where unions have made ridiculous demands and deserve criticism.

      He is simply pointing out that polls indicate that most parents are supportive of teacher's unions and are satisfied with how their local school districts are handling their children's needs during the pandemic. This cuts against the common RW / populist narrative of aloof education technocrats and self serving union bosses overriding the Will of the People and keeping schools closed despite What Families Really Want. It even puts a damper on the hope of some GOP campaign operatives that Republicans can ride the school closing issue to victory in local races or the 2022 midterms.

      But even if you disagree, TD never promised an echo chamber bereft of alternative viewpoints. I think it goes way too far to say the piece should never have been published.

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        Kevin Johnson

        My point is that the piece’s definition of “what people want” ignores what important unions and their media and democratic official allies did to terrorize parents. I contend they lied and exaggerated the risks of attending school and lied and ignored evidence of the dangers of closings. By ignoring this gross manipulation and false narrative, I think the author wrongly argues that the purveyors of lies and exaggerations were really just following public demand, and thus shouldn’t be blamed. I find it the height of Chutzpah, just as when Trumpkins convinced people of lies about the election and then used polling showing their base’s outrage over the “steal” to justify despicable moves to delegitimize the election. I don’t want the author censured, but am puzzled at the choice to publish this without obvious rejoinders. Anti-vaccers have the right to be heard, but I would be puzzled at seeing an article of this length published here by one of them without challenge. Perhaps you are right that I went too far in implying it shouldn’t be published. I will ponder that while I await the next outrageous union demand in a major city as a requirement for open schools next fall...perhaps that all parents certify that they will always vote Democratic or admit to being racist? Very sad stuff.

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          Joel B

          That his piece made a different point than the one(s) you would have made doesn’t mean he’s ignoring anything. And the comparison to anti-vaxxers is just bizarre.

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          Aylene Wright

          I don't think he's saying they "shouldn't be blamed". I also find it quite arrogant to assume that parents reluctant to sent kids back to school *only* feel that way because they were "lied to" and therefore all their concerns can be dismissed. It's certainly not a way to convince anyone.

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          1. Greg Sturges

            The article's thesis is that the teachers' unions didn't keep schools closed, it was parents nervous about sending their kids back. I think that thesis is totally wrong.

            As for you second point, parents overly worried about their kids getting covid in school (or getting covid in general) or their kids bringing covid into the home from school are misinformed. They were (or are) acting on bad information about the relative risk of the disease to children or how often children spread it. Whether they were lied to is less important than the fact that they have bad information.

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            Kevin Johnson

            I don’t think I said what you said I said. But, that said, Ive said enough. Thanks for your thoughts.

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    2. Tim Johnson

      Author's a senior fellow at Manhattan Institute, they don't generally take the side of teacher unions.... And frankly I don't find the piece to be so objectionable that it shouldn't have been printed at all.

      (I do share your dislike of public-sector unions: teachers, police, firefighters, etc.)

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        Kevin Johnson

        Fair enough.

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