Homeschooling parents and taxpayers are up against it. Under the existing system of educating our children being decided under collective bargaining labor union contracts, without greater civic participation you'll lose (worsening education with ever escalating costs) every time.
We learned this painful lesson in civics on-the-job with children in government schools at the time. First and foremost we were shocked to discover that our local school board (Shenendehowa NY) negotiated the teacher salaries and contracts with the union itself! Look at those salaries - they are way out of line with the respective lower standard of living wages.
Now, you may say, what's wrong with that, somebody's gotta do it!
Well, I'll tell you what's wrong with 'that'. With little parental/taxpayer interest the voting public is dwarfed by the thundering herd of union voters - that's right voting for the candidates who were most likely to give them what they demanded! Naturally, in keeping with "solidarity" they honored the union leadership's commands who to vote for. How's that any different for choosing your correction officers in state prison?
It is this growing awareness by the public that is reviving the hatemongering directed at the home-schoolers. Anyone that can still think for himself can readily see it's not about 'educating our precious children'. It's about expanding control and power over Americans and their families.
The subversion of America is seeping into your home from the schools. Think for a moment of the many conflicts with our religions, prayer, culture, guns, childbirth, healthcare, military, race, ethnicity, etc. that these disruptors have caused us. You can be an activist on the offensive on many fronts just by using your human energies to dethrone the academic oligarchy and save our country. Informing neighbors, friends, voters, and others will be your goal.
All state teacher labor contracts are on Google that I could see. It takes just two rebels to rumble. Won't you be one to ask someone else?
The below article is a snippet (pg. 391)
Union Strength and Collective Bargaining Agreement Restrictiveness
Because the CBA lays out the parameters of many aspects of local education policy, the statutory authority to negotiate with the district over the content of the CBA is an important source of influence for the local union. Unions have incentives to push for the regulation of as many aspects of district operations as possible to advance the interests of their members. The more precisely and comprehensively teachers’ rights are outlined in the contracts, the less able district administrators are to, for example, impose new duties on union members or make changes to the school operations that negatively affect working conditions.
The CBA, however, is the result of a bargaining process, which implies that it is the outcome of a negotiation between two parties whose interests are not aligned. The degree to which one party can obtain its objectives in a negotiation is determined by its power relative to the opposing party. In traditional conceptions of management–union bargaining in the private sector, union power is derived from its work denial powers, or the power to strike. Indeed, 14 states allow teacher strikes, including California (Loeb & Miller, 2007). We focus on another source of local union power that is pervasive in education but about which the empirical research base is small: political influence.
A primary source of unions’ political power comes from their ability to influence local board elections (Moe, 2006a). Ninety-six percent of board members are elected through popular vote by residents of their school districts (Hess, 2002). These elections are typically low turnout affairs, which makes their outcomes more susceptible to influence from mobilized interests (Moe, 2005). There are at least two ways in which organized interests might work to influence elections: campaign activity that promotes favored candidates and getting their members to the polls to vote for those candidates. Studies suggest that unions do both—and to no small degree. Seventy-seven percent of respondents to a national survey of board members conducted by Hess and Leal (2005) identified unions as active in campaigning in board elections—a larger share than for any other interest group. Similarly, Moe’s (2006b) analysis of voting data from two Southern California counties shows that teachers are between two and seven times more likely than non-teachers to vote in board elections.
Moreover, his analysis suggests that these voting rates are driven by “occupational interest” in the outcome rather than just greater civic-mindedness... Read more