I’ve spent most of my life in classrooms—as a teacher, as someone who trained other teachers, and as a consultant who has walked through schools across the country. So when I hear the phrase “dog whistle,” I don’t only think about race, though that’s often how it’s used. A dog whistle can also be a quiet, vicious kind of propaganda aimed at public schools and the people who work in them. It’s designed to scare parents, to make them believe their children are in danger simply by walking through a schoolhouse door. I’ve watched this happen for years, and it breaks my heart. I’m not blindly devoted to teacher unions. I’ve been frustrated with them at times, and I believe they need to change. But I also know they are still necessary. They protect teachers the way any union protects its workers, and right now teachers need protection more than ever. The real problem isn’t the union hall down the street. It’s the coordinated, well-funded campaign to convince the public that schools are enemies of children, that teachers are indoctrinating kids, and that the only way to save a child is to pull them out of public education. That campaign is coming from the political right, and it’s making life harder for the very kids it claims to care about.
Let’s be honest about what this propaganda actually sounds like. Parents are told that if they send their son to school, he might come home a girl. That is not a real risk. That is a nightmare invented to inflame people who don’t understand gender identity. Parents are told that a book with a queer character—or even a book simply written by a queer author—will somehow teach their child a “gay ideology.” Most of the time, the banned books don’t even contain the things people claim they do. It’s absurd. It’s exhausting. And it’s deeply harmful. Teachers are already underpaid and under-supported. They don’t enter this profession to get rich; they enter it because they care. They have died shielding students from bullets in mass shootings. Yet they are treated as villains. Yes, unions have flaws, and yes, administrators are often part of the problem, but the biggest threat to public education is the right-wing movement that wants to dismantle it. We can’t pretend otherwise. We also can’t pretend that schools are equal. Public schools today are probably more segregated by race and income than they were before Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Separate and unequal is still the reality. We need to talk about race, but we also need to talk about poverty, systemic disinvestment, and the way intergenerational poverty follows children into classrooms. It’s not just about black and brown children; it’s about poor children of every background. The right loves to focus on culture war nonsense like Drag Queen Story Time—which is safe, joyful, and harmless—while ignoring the real dangers children face in places where they are not protected. I’d rather ask hard questions about any environment where children are vulnerable, but let’s not pretend that public schools are the danger.
There are good ideas out there for improving schools, and one of the best came from Albert Shanker, the longtime president of the American Federation of Teachers. He believed in merit pay, much higher pay for master teachers, a modified version of tenure, a career ladder for teaching aides, real accountability, and more creative freedom for teachers. I support those ideas, with changes. But before we can implement any of them, we have to free public schools from the lies and hate-driven policies of the right. That means pushing back against the anti-public-school disinformation that has poisoned so many communities. It means protecting teachers from political attacks disguised as parental concern. It means rethinking tenure—not ending it, but modifying it, so that teachers can’t be fired for using good children’s literature, while also making it clear that no one should have a job for life regardless of performance. And it means stopping the drain of taxpayer money through vouchers. Vouchers have never been about helping students broadly. They have been used to weaken public schools, to send resources to private and charter schools that are not held to the same standards. Some charter schools are excellent, but they are exceptions, not the rule. Many of them simply won’t serve children with special needs, and even when they accept those students, they often operate free from the legal protections that public schools must follow. That’s not fair, and it’s not right.
We also need to talk about administrators. Too many district administrators have become experts at protecting their own jobs instead of supporting their schools. They sit in central offices, far from classrooms, making decisions that make no sense to the people on the ground. They shift blame to teachers when things go wrong, even when the real problems are lack of oversight, lack of professional development, and a culture of fear. If we’re going to talk about accountability, administrators need accountability too. They should be subject to a modified tenure system, just like teachers. They should also be rewarded for real success—not for making themselves look good, but for creating conditions where teachers and students can thrive. And we have to stop the demonization of the Common Core. I’ve worked in curriculum development, and I can tell you that standards are like the frame of a beautiful picture. The frame holds everything together, but the strategies, the methods, the creativity—those should be left to teachers and schools. If a school is making progress toward meaningful goals, it should be celebrated. If it’s not, then we can talk about responsibility. But we cannot hold teachers accountable for things that are outside their control, and we cannot keep changing the rules every time a new political wind blows.
The truth is, there are brilliant, creative teachers in classrooms right now, working under impossible conditions. There are also brilliant administrators, though far too few. So many teachers are constantly looking over their shoulders, afraid of what self-appointed parent watchdogs will find in the school library, afraid of being accused of something they never did, afraid of losing their jobs over a misunderstanding or a deliberate lie. That is no way to educate children. It’s no way to live as a professional. And it’s certainly no way to build trust between schools and the communities they serve. I believe the ideas that Shanker proposed, updated and developed with care, need to be brought into the open. We need to talk to unions, to teachers, to families, to community members, to voters. We need to explain that these reforms are not about punishing teachers or dismantling public education. They are about returning resources to public schools, giving teachers the freedom they need to do their jobs, and building stronger instructional practices that actually help children succeed. People are more receptive than we often think. The problem is that we haven’t had the right conversation. We’ve been drowning in outrage and fear, and nobody has bothered to offer a hopeful, practical vision for what public schools could be.
At the end of the day, this isn’t about politics or ideology for me. It’s about the kids I’ve taught, the teachers I’ve trained, and the schools I’ve walked through. I’ve seen classrooms filled with love and laughter and hard work. I’ve seen teachers stay late, buy supplies with their own money, and dry children’s tears. I’ve seen administrators who truly lead, who support their staff, and who put students first. That’s the public school I believe in. But I’ve also seen schools starved of resources, blamed for problems they didn’t create, and attacked by people who have never spent a day in the classroom. The failures of public education are not primarily the fault of teacher unions. They are the result of poverty, inequality, administrative bloat, and a relentless campaign of lies from the anti-public-school right. If we want to save public education, we have to stop treating teachers as enemies and start treating them as the essential professionals they are. We have to fund schools adequately, stop draining money into vouchers, hold administrators accountable, and give teachers the trust and freedom they deserve. We have to stop the fearmongering and have honest, human conversations about what children actually need. Public schools have always been a place where communities come together, where children learn not just to read and write but to live together. That was true before, and it can be true again. But only if we choose hope over fear, trust over suspicion, and truth over propaganda. That’s a choice every one of us can make, not just with our words, but with our votes, our conversations, and our commitment to the children standing in front of us.