In the beginning, teachers unions were supposed to be only concerned with teachers’ salaries and working conditions. But that was a long time ago. Today, emboldened by the current president and first lady in the White House, they’ve become propaganda machines for left wing progressives. The losers in this battle of ideologues, if the unions prevail, will be our children.

This past week, both the nation’s largest teachers union, the National Education Association (NEA) and the second largest, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) both declared their solidarity with progressives promoting critical race theory (CRT) in our schools. The NEA held its annual meeting last week and the measures approved by delegates deserve closer scrutiny. One calls for the union to support and lead campaigns that “result in increasing the implementation of culturally responsive education, critical race theory, and ethnic studies curriculum in pre-K thru 12^th grade and higher education.”

The Wall Street Journal editorial board defines CRT as “a neo-Marxist ideology that is pervasive in higher education and teaches that a person is defined above all else by race, gender and sexual orientation, and that American institutions are designed to ensure white supremacy and “the patriarchy.”

The NEA delegates also directed the organization to lobby for “professional development around cultural responsiveness, implicit bias, anti-racism, trauma-informed practices, restorative justice practices and other racial justice trainings” for “all school employees.” The delegates called for similar training for students. In other words, teaching second-graders how to distrust kids with different skin colors.

Another approved statement asks the union to “join with Black Lives Matter at School and the Zinn Education Project” to hold a rally on George Floyd’s birthday, honor other victims of police violence, and promote “a national day of action to teach lessons about structural racism and oppression.” Howard Zinn is a deceased radical whose history of the United States is described by WSJ as “one long tale of the people versus the oppressors in power.”

Making it abundantly clear whose side they are on, the teachers unions claim that parents who oppose any of this are motivated by hate and are assaulting free speech. In a speech Tuesday, AFT President Randi Weingarten claimed that “’culture warriors are labeling any discussion of race, racism or discrimination as CRT to try to make it toxic” and “bullying teachers and trying to stop us from teaching students accurate history.” She likened the backlash to historical revisionism in the Soviet Union and other repressive regimes.

The WSJ says, “But no one is opposed to teaching about America’s difficult racial history, including the evils of slavery and Jim Crow. What parents are awakening to is that their children are being told the lie that America has made little or no racial progress and therefore its legal, economic and political systems must be turned upside down.”

Clearly this response from the teachers unions is in reaction to wide-spread parental dismay with school boards, including those in Loudon County, Virginia, where five families sued last month over school district policies and practices that are rooted in CRT. The families claim that administrators chilled speech and discriminated against nonminority students. The WSJ says the unions are upset because such parental pushback threatens their control over instruction in schools.

Recently I wrote of the progress School Choice is making in many states (School Choice Progress Continues) as more and more parents push for the freedom to choose where their children are educated. With this doubling down by the teachers unions on the issue of CRT, it looks like a banner year for private, parochial, and charter schools!

School choice is gaining ground against the teachers unions despite the pandemic; maybe even because of the pandemic. For years the teachers unions have tried to portray school choice as a threat to the education of children, but the argument is losing traction. Parents of both political parties are seeing school choice for what it really is – a chance for children of all economic classes to get a good education.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board says it’s been a banner year for school choice. Across the nation, states are providing more opportunities for children to take advantage of school choice options. They mention four state budgets that passed in the last two weeks in which lawmakers included provisions that give families more educational opportunities.

In New Hampshire, Republican lawmakers approved Education Freedom Accounts, which students can use toward such expense as private school tuition, tutoring, textbooks and technology. Scholarship funds are available to families earning up to 300% of the federal poverty limit (FPL) at an average of $4,600, the state per pupil funding amount for public school students. The state Education Department estimates the program could save the state at least $360 million over a decade. Imagine that – saving money while giving kids better educational opportunities!

Pennsylvania’s Democratic Governor Tom Wolf signed a budget that includes an expansion of a high-demand state tax-credit scholarship program. No, it wasn’t the governor’s idea, but the GOP legislature pushed the measure and now Mr. Wolf wants to get the credit. The Educational Improvement Tax Credit cap will rise by $40 million to $175 million for K-12 scholarships, enough to fund an estimated 13,000 more students.

Ohio also packaged several school choice provisions into their budget that Republican Gov. Mike DeWine signed last week. These include funding for high-performing charter schools and higher scholarship values for the state’s voucher program. The Legislature also created a new K-12 Educational Savings Accounts (ESA) program, which offers students a modest $500.

Progress in school choice is not limited to the east. In Arizona, the Legislature raised the funding cap for a special-needs tax credit scholarship program and allowed low-income students at struggling public schools to switch to the state’s ESA program without a waiting period. It could have been better, however, as lawmakers, including three Republicans, rejected an expansion of ESAs to 600,000 more low-income students.

Seven states have created new tax-credit scholarship or ESA programs this year, and more than a dozen have expanded programs. The benefit will flow to thousands of students and families looking to escape the prison of low-performing public schools. Politicians of both parties should wake up and realize that school choice benefits everyone, except perhaps the teachers unions who are stuffing those same politicians’ campaign coffers. Sooner or later, even they will realize that doing what’s best for the children is the winning political decision.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there are an estimated 6.2 million Americans who have Alzheimer’s disease. More than 1 in 9 people (11.3%) age 65 and older has Alzheimer’s disease. The number of people living with the disease doubles every 5 years beyond age 65. This number is projected to nearly triple to 14 million Americans by 2060.

These statistics should alarm everyone, but apparently, they don’t. How else to explain why many in Congress are trying to stop the federal government from paying for the first drug that has ever shown real progress in the battle to combat this dread disease?

Recently I wrote of this breakthrough in the treatment of Alzheimer’s with the FDA approval of the drug aducanumab, which is manufactured by Biogen as Aduhelm (Alzheimer’s Hope Arrives). In that post I explained: “The cause of Alzheimer’s is still elusive but its hallmark is amyloid plaques and tau tangles in the brain, which usually begins long before symptoms become apparent. Many scientists believe removing amyloid could slow disease progression. This is how aducanumab works, by clearing amyloid. A high dose of the drug in a late-stage trial removed 71% of the amyloid buildup after 18 months.”

The Wall Street Journal editorial board tells us that public-health officials and media critics failed to stop federal approval of the drug, so now they’re mounting an assault on the drug’s cost to stop Medicare from paying for it. “It’s unconscionable to ask seniors and taxpayers to pay $56,000 a year for a drug that has yet to be proven effective,” Oregon Senator Ron Wyden tweeted after the FDA approved the drug this month.

The annual cost of treating Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias in the U.S. is expected to reach $355 billion this year. While $56,000 a year is a lot of money, it is not unusual for many other new drugs, especially cancer drugs, and is sure to come down as treatment success spurs competition in the marketplace. The WSJ says a drug price war last decade between Gilead and AbbVie caused Hepatitis C treatment net prices to fall by nearly 80 percent. Competition may also occur with Alzheimer’s treatments as several therapies that have shown promise in clinical trials aim to seek approval in the next few years. If we refuse to pay the high price of breakthroughs in disease treatment, we will never make progress in the treatment of any disease.

The WSJ explains the FDA approval process: “The FDA approved Aduhelm because it significantly reduced amyloid. Many of Aduhelm’s critics in the public-health crowd have criticized the FDA’s accelerated approval program for years. They don’t believe drugs with incremental benefits should be approved.” 

If Aduhelm delays the progression of the disease for some patients by even a year or two, it will save tens of billions of dollars in Medicare, Medicaid, home care, and other health costs. The WSJ summarizes the real problem: “The hostility to Aduhelm illustrates the healthcare paternalism of American progressives. They believe we spend too much money on old people. They want to put the government in charge of paying for all healthcare, and then put “experts” in charge of determining what treatments patients can receive so that the elderly can go gently into the night.”

These are the same people who want us all to have socialized medicine. You can be sure that if that ever happens, drugs for the elderly – in fact treatment of any disease for the elderly – will be their lowest priority.