Kids Aren’t Cars: How adult interests are turning schools into ‘dropout factories’

(NN&V Staff) – “Kids Aren’t Cars” is a new short film series set for national release today. Using examples from the Midwest, the films expose the negative impact organized labor has had on the American education system, imposing a one-size-fits-all assembly line model that leaves students behind and treats teachers as interchangeable and indistinguishable workers, no better and no worse than the most incompetent and ineffective among them. “Kids Aren’t Cars” explains how that this “union mentality” is stifling innovation and improvement throughout the nation’s public schools. See the trailer here.

Two films will be released two per week – Tuesdays and Thursdays – at KidsArentCars.com. A total of nine releases are planned.

A major theme of “Kids Aren’t Cars” is that while our public schools consume more and more tax dollars each year, student achievement has flatlined. But that does not prevent the teacher unions from demanding more money, which, of course, ends up in the pockets of their members and in the union’s political coffers. The best interests of the children are an afterthought, at best.

What makes “Kids Aren’t Cars” so hard-hitting is the fact that it explains the union’s game from individuals who have witnessed it first-hand.

In one film, an executive director of a literacy clinic in Detroit – where high school graduates go to learn how to read – compares the actions of the pro-union school board to the Ku Klux Klan. “If they were sitting up there in Klan robes,” she says, “we would be marching and screaming.” [Eight of the nine school board members are black.]

Another episode reveals details about how the Michigan Education Association uses its collective bargaining power to force expensive, union-owned health insurance on public schools, stealing millions that could be spent on students. A former executive director of the company admits that it’s a scam to raise millions for the teachers unions at the expense of taxpayers and students.

The fifth film in the series, “Years Trump Effectiveness,” tells the story of two Indiana teachers recognized state-wide for their impact on students, only to be fired literally the next day because they lacked the seniority of their “co-workers.”

Numerous leaders sound the alarm throughout the series, but do lawmakers have the courage to stand up to the all-powerful teachers’ unions? “Kids Aren’t Cars” illustrates the dire need for our leaders to take action and reform our public schools before it’s too late. The United States continues to slip globally, with student achievement lagging behind nations such as Iceland and Hungary.

“Our public school system, under union domination for the past four decades, is designed to benefit adults at the expense of children,” said Kyle Olson, founder of Education Action Group and director of the film series. “Efforts to improve public education always focus on spending, but the money gets frittered away on automatic annual pay raises, lavish health benefits and retirement plans for employees. And the kids end up being forgotten.

“‘ Kids Aren’t Cars'” is an unflinching look at the state of public education in America and what can be done about it,” Olson said.