[Shivetya]

Sorry, just look at which school systems are still closed to this day regardless of the science. NYC union leadership rebuked the CDC when their guidelines did not meet NYC union rules.

Where as much of the rest of the country has had children in schools just fine for months.

You can damn well place a lot of blame on the unions because they are not there for the welfare of students and no action they have taken shows otherwise. If anything they guarantee the least needed teachers will ever end up in schools desperate to have them. They will go after any alternative means of education which includes home teaching, something they have effectively now forced on many minority families in our largest cities.

[whimsicalism]

The science is not clear-cut. Many "minority families in our largest cities" have been polled and support continued distance learning while the pandemic is ongoing. In the urban district that I grew up in, I know this to be the case, I am not sure about in NYC.

I think it is funny that outsiders on an anti-union crusade will continue dismiss what students & parents who actually go to schools like these say many of the problems are.

e: And I'm not saying unions are entirely unproblematic. I had a few (2 or so) teachers who were protected. But they are so far from the root cause of the dysfunction in our urban schools. Informal segregation is a much bigger piece of the puzzle.

[hintymad]

This gives me new perspective. I wish we had more discussion like this.

If all media could list facts and stats, and lay out all kinds of reasons and assumptions. Unfortunately, both left and right media are doing the opposite. For instance, some right labels NYC teacher's union as a woke entity. The teacher union said that reopening school was racist. And Twitter, oh, the almighty righteous Twitter, simply bans the accounts who are opposing CDC's guidelines. It's just so hard to see influential medias and platforms to engage nuanced discussion.

[whimsicalism]

Okay, here are some of the stats I'm relying on to say that desegregation is needed and good:

* Randomly assigned poor & black students to socioeconomically diverse and non-diverse schools, found rich-poor achievement gap was halved in math (https://production-tcf.imgix.net/app/uploads/2010/10/1600543...)

* Systemic benefits in national tests for students in socioeconomically diverse schools, regardless of family background (https://tcf.org/content/facts/the-benefits-of-socioeconomica... along with a whole laundry list of other evidence).

* Evidence that minority parents in my school district favor distance learning while the pandemic continues. I couldn't find the original stat because the thread was deleted, but here is a similar poll showing the same thing (https://www.the74million.org/article/as-more-dcps-schools-op...)

[hintymad]

Thanks. I was not challenging your comment. Instead, I was trying to compliment yours, as it gives a new perspective on why teacher's union didn't want schools to open. Otherwise, I had this impression that the union used racism to hide their true motives.