InfluenceWatch Podcast #219: How Teachers Unions Are Failing Our Students

By fighting to keep schools closed—excuse me, open for virtual learning—for a full year in the jurisdictions in which they hold the most power, teachers unions sought to expand their power. Now public-school enrollments are tumbling, and evidence is piling up that the school closures harmed students’ mental health and expanded the racial achievement gaps the unions claim to seek to close.

Joining me to discuss the teachers unions’ attempts to spin their school closures and her organization’s efforts to counter their influence is Ashley Varner, vice president of communications and federal affairs for the Freedom Foundation.

• Freedom Foundation: AFT’s Weingarten personifies unions’ phony agenda
• National Review: Organized Labor Is a Dubious Ally for Conservatives
• National Review: Los Angeles’s Teachers’ Union Is Out of Control
• Reason: L.A. Teachers Union Leader: ‘There’s No Such Thing As Learning Loss’
• Harvard Gazette: Remote learning likely widened racial, economic achievement gap
• New York Times: With Plunging Enrollment, a ‘Seismic Hit’ to Public Schools
• InfluenceWatch: United Teachers Los Angeles