Where do your Congressperson's children go to school?

It doesn’t seem right that lawmakers take lots of money from teachers’ unions, write laws (America 2000, Goals 2000, No Child Left Behind…) that mandate dehumanizing standardized tests that don’t really help children learn or tell us much of anything about their schooling, pass and then don’t fund mandates, politicize schools and budgets, and then neatly sidestep the mess they’ve created by sending their own children to private schools where such tests, unfunded mandates, and politicization are non-issues.

Nationwide, about 11% of families send their children to private schools. We can guess that this number would be higher if more of us had greater means.

In Hawaii, about half of state representatives send their children to private schools. (Hawaiian Lawmakers' Children) In Florida, the number is about 40%, and “the rate climbs to 60 percent for lawmakers on education committees that make key decisions about K-12 policy and funding.” (Florida Lawmakers' Children) I don’t know how representative these numbers are, but to say that state lawmakers send their children to private schools about 3-4 times as often as you and I do sounds about right.

The numbers are the same for Federal lawmakers, between 40 and 50% (Congressional School Choice).

We may assume that almost all of these families, too, live in the best public school districts.

I’m not writing against private schools—I’ve taught in them virtually my entire career (there was that semester I taught at the City University of New York, 140 students in one class with no teaching assistant…). I chose to send both my children through private schools.

I’m not writing against public schools. I went to a few for ten years, had some excellent teachers, married a public school teacher, and I know and have known many, many remarkable persons associated with public education.

I’m not writing against politicians’ choices as parents. They have, like anyone else of means, the right to choose the best schools for their children.

I am writing against the mix of money, influence, and politics that allows teachers unions to have such unfair and detrimental influence on education in the U.S. And I am writing against the hypocrisy of politicians who—ignoring or rationalizing their own educational choices for their own children and ignoring what we actually know about good schools and good teaching—bow to this influence and make schooling worse rather than better.