Education Week - February 3, 2021 - 12

Has the Public
Turned on
Teachers?
By Madeline Will
Gone are the social media posts
from exhausted parents saying that
teachers deserve to make a million
dollars. In contrast to the beginning
of the pandemic, many teachers
these days say they're being made to
feel more like villains than heroes.
As a growing number of schools
consider bringing more children into
classrooms, and coronavirus cases
continue to surge in some parts of
the country, teachers' unions have
been pushing back. More safety precautions are needed for reopening,
they say. But proponents of resuming
in-person instruction point to studies
showing that COVID-19 transmission rates in schools have been relatively low when mitigation strategies
are in place and community transmission remains low.
That rift about when school doors
should open, teachers say, is causing
them to take some heat.
The pandemic began with people cheering teachers for pivoting so
quickly to remote instruction, said
David Labaree, a professor emeritus at the Stanford Graduate School
of Education. But now, teachers are
seen by a vocal segment of the public
" not as the first responders, but more
the people blocking the path to the
classroom door. "
Across the country and throughout the pandemic, teachers' unions
have been pushing for a more conservative approach to getting teachers
and kids back in buildings. In some
places, their political maneuvering
has escalated. Members of the Chicago teachers' union voted to collectively refuse to work in person, despite the districts' orders. The West
Virginia state teachers' unions filed
lawsuits to halt the state's mandate
of in-person learning. In the Bellevue school district near Seattle, the
teachers' union encouraged some of
its members to not show up to work
in protest of the district's expansion
of in-person learning; the district responded by taking the union to court.
And while many states are working to vaccinate teachers in hopes
of protecting employees and easing
labor tensions, some unions-including in Fairfax, Va., and in California-have said that vaccinations
alone aren't enough to convince
them it's safe to return to work.
Such stances have sparked outrage from some parents, opinion columnists, and a vocal contingent on
Twitter who have accused unions of

playing politics and not putting kids
first. Teachers say this criticism has
been demoralizing, especially since
many are working harder than ever
to teach and reach students remotely.
" Back in March, we were considered heroes, " said Alison Eichhorn,
a high school teacher who sits on the
Chicago Teacher Unions' executive
board. " Now it's like we're lazy, we
just want to teach in the comfort
of our own homes, we don't want
to teach students. ... It is to a point
where you feel like you can't do anything right. "
Even so, a nationally representative Education Next survey, conducted from Nov. 10 to Dec. 3, found that
just 30 percent of parents said teachers' unions have a negative effect on
schools-about the same as survey
results from May 2019 and 2020. Forty-six percent of parents said unions
have a positive effect on schools, up
from 40 percent last spring.
" We found that although parents
are concerned about learning loss
amid the pandemic, they also report
fairly broad satisfaction with how
their local schools are responding, "
said Martin West, a Harvard Graduate School of Education professor
and the editor-in-chief of Education
Next. " I interpret that pattern as
suggesting that American parents
... are sympathetic to the challenges
schools are facing. That sympathy
may be carrying through to teachers
and even to the unions that represent
them. "
The Education Next survey also
found that about a third of parents
who have the option to send their
children to in-person school report
that they are not doing so. And
parents of Black and Hispanic students are, respectively, 19 percentage
points and 8 percentage points less
likely than the parents of white students to choose to send their kids
back to full-time in-person instruction if they have the option.
" In plenty of places where unions
have opposed reopening, they have
the support of many parents who
are concerned for their own children's safety, " West said. " I think it
is always risky to reach conclusions
in trends of public opinion generally based on what you hear from the
loudest voices. "

Some parents are furious
Still, teachers say they worry that
they have lost some support in their
communities. Over the last couple

12œ|œEDUCATION WEEKœ|œFebruary 3, 2021œ|œwww.edweek.org

-DFN+DQUDKDQ(ULH7LPHV1HZVYLD$3

$WȤUVWGHHPHGSDQGHPLFKHURHVVRPH
now feel like villains

A teacher greets students and families during a drive-by parade in Erie, Penn., in April 2020. Many schools around
the country remain closed, and some teachers say they're taking heat for it.

of years, teachers' unions have built
up goodwill through the Red for Ed
movement, in which teachers protested-and sometimes went on
strike-for higher wages and more
school funding. Teachers were fighting for their students' learning conditions, and the public was largely
behind them.
Parents and teachers were on the
same side, Labaree said, and that
camaraderie continued in the early
months of the pandemic, as parents
got a firsthand look at remote instruction. But as the pandemic wore
on and teachers' unions continued to
resist going back into school buildings, " that started putting teachers
on the other side of an issue that a lot
of parents were concerned about, "
he said.
Kathleen Sheehan, a parent of
two school-aged children, said she
supported Massachusetts teachers'
unions' calls for smaller class sizes
and building upgrades before the
pandemic. But when the state teachers' union included those and other
demands beyond coronavirus-related safety precautions in its proposal
to reopen schools, Sheehan was no
longer on board.
" At that point, it was really eyeopening to me that there was something more than just safety and fear
and anxiety, " she said. " It's clearly
political. "
Remote learning has been " disastrous, " she said. Last spring, when
schools first shut down, her 9-yearold daughter would sob while trying
to do her schoolwork and told Sheehan that she wanted to die.
So when Sheehan's local teachers'
union, the Avon Education Association, said last summer that teachers
wanted to begin the school year remotely-in part because social distancing in school could have " traumatic effects " on young students
and " a hybrid model will only exacerbate student and faculty anxiety and mental health concerns " -
Sheehan was furious. She switched
her two children to another school
district, where they are now attend-

ing two mornings a week of in-person school.
Meanwhile, at least 23 states have
made some or all teachers eligible
to receive the coronavirus vaccine,
according to Education Week's vaccine tracker. That has sparked some
hope that more schools will be able
to reopen soon. But vaccines will not
be a silver bullet, some union officials say.
The Fairfax Education Association
in Virginia was among the first in the
nation to draw a hard line: Schools
should remain closed until there's a
vaccine or a widely available treatment for COVID-19. Now, teachers
there are starting to receive shots-
but the union says it's still not safe to
resume full in-person instruction.
FEA President Kimberly Adams
pointed to high COVID-19 transmission rates in the area and said
vaccinating teachers doesn't mean
everyone is safe: It's still not clear
whether vaccinated people will be
able to transmit the disease, and
students will not be able to be vaccinated anytime soon.
Adams said schools should remain virtual until cases start to drop
below a certain threshold. Then, she
would be in favor of vaccinated staff
returning to school buildings-but
there should still be an option for
parents to choose remote instruction, she said, in part so that educators who are unable or unwilling to
get the vaccine can stay home, too.
Adams said many parents can
now see an endpoint and are willing to wait a few more months. Still,
throughout the pandemic, there
have been websites and social media accounts criticizing the union,
angry emails laced with profanity,
and even a few threats that Adams
had to forward to the police.
" Our union is not a big, bad
thing, " Adams said. " [We] are the
teachers who are parents, and the
bus drivers who are grandparents,
and the food-service workers who
are community members. The
target becomes the union, but the
union is made up of all the individ-

ual people who are trying to protect
our community. "
Yet many parents say they're
not against teachers or even their
unions, they just want their kids back
in classrooms.
" There's been such a binary created that if you're pro kids going back
to school, then you're somehow anti-teacher, " said Jennifer Sey, a parent in San Francisco with four kids,
including a kindergartner and a
high school senior. " Somebody has
to represent the kids in all of this. "
Her kids are lonely and isolated
learning from home, she said, and
she's worried about other kids in the
city with fewer resources who are
falling behind academically.

'I'm not willing to risk my life'
Teachers say they understand the
frustration among parents. They feel
it, too. Remote learning has been
difficult and time-consuming, and
they worry about students' declining
engagement. But many feel like the
stakes of reopening are life and death.
" I want nothing more than to be
back, but I'm not willing to risk my
life, my students' lives, or my colleagues' lives, " said Eichhorn, the
Chicago teacher.
The Chicago school system hasn't
yet announced a return to in-person instruction for high school, but
it has said elementary and middle
school students would return to
campus on Feb. 1, with their teachers reporting to school buildings a
week before. CTU members, however, voted to refuse to return to
work in person, saying they want
to wait until more safety measures
have been put in place and educators are vaccinated.
A small group of staff members
were already on campuses with a
few thousand prekindergarten and
special needs students. But when
the district and union were unable to
reach an agreement, CTU called for
all of its members to begin working
remotely. As of press time, a potential strike was on the table.

http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - February 3, 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - February 3, 2021