Catholic schools disprove teacher-union claims schools must close for...

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

63% : Without teachers unions and stifling bureaucracies, Catholic schools outperform public schools in good times -- but institutions are truly tested in bad times, and under the stress of a once-in-a-century pandemic, Catholic schools stayed true to their charges, adapted and proved what worked.
62% : Mayor Eric Adams has commendably signaled his intention to ignore United Federation of Teachers chief Michael Mulgrew's suggestion that public schools close and shift to remote learning, insisting that after two years of "lost education," we simply "can't do it again."
57% : While public schools got bogged down in pandemic politics, union-driven closures and a year and a half of mostly ineffective remote learning, Catholic schools in major cities have been continually open for in-person instruction since September 2020.
55% : For public schools, it's a question of having the political will to stand up to teachers unions:
54% : When public schools shut down in early 2020 and fumbled with remote learning, Catholic schools scrambled to get students tablets and Wi-Fi hotspots.
48% : Similarly in Boston, Catholic schools reopened almost a year ahead of public schools without any COVID-19 outbreaks.
47% : Boston's parochial schools added more than 5,000 new students the last two school years, with 80% transferring from public schools.
40% : Parochial-school enrollments, by contrast, were up for the first time in 27 years, with 2,500 students transferring from public schools despite the burden of tuition.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.