Briefly Noted: True Inequality

Wirepoints is "an independent, nonprofit company delivering original research and commentary about Illinois’ economy and government." It has been one of the best sources for data on Covid in Illinois. Today they run a striking blog that speaks volumes about Blue America:

True inequality: In-class education at Chicago’s Catholic schools but remote learning at public schools

I certainly hold no brief for the Archdiocese of Chicago, but the response of Catholic schools in Chicago to Covid has been exemplary. Be it noted, the response has been carried out in the face of the same determined hostility to religion and its free exercise that has become a feature of most of Blue America:

The difference in how Chicago’s low-income, minority students are being treated by the city’s two major school systems during the pandemic should make school choice skeptics reconsider their position.

At the heart of the issue is the Chicago Teachers Union’s absolute refusal to allow an in-class learning option for public school students. CPS teachers haven’t been in the classroom for nearly nine months and now CPS officials want to partially restart in-person learning at the beginning of 2021. CTU is hinting they’ll strike for the fourth time in less than a decade to stop that from happening.

In sharp contrast, over 2,000 Catholic school teachers of the Chicago Archdiocese have been teaching in-person, five days a week, to 34,000 city students since the beginning of the 2020-2021 school year.

It’s not as if CPS students and teachers are more at risk from COVID than their private school counterparts. CPS and the Archdiocese serve the same Chicago communities. CPS serves about 350,000 students, 85 percent of them minorities. The majority of city students the Archdiocese serves are also from minority, low-income homes. The students may be the same, but the way they are being treated is far different.

The CTU, of course, is a radically Leftist organization. These snippets will tell you all you need to know. First from, yes, Wikipedia: 

The Chicago Teachers Union is a labor union representing teachers, paraprofessionals, and clinicians in the Chicago public school system. The union has consistently fought for improved pay, benefits, and job security for its members, and it has resisted efforts to vary teacher pay based on performance evaluations.

 

Note that Wikipedia doesn't pretend in this telling sentence that the students are any concern of the CTU. And, from Fox, directly related to the issue of educational shutdowns for the extremely well paid CTU members:

The Chicago Teachers Union is facing swift criticism on social media Sunday after claiming in a now deleted tweet that the push to reopen schools is "rooted in sexism, racism and misogyny."

The CTU's position is that the teachers will not return to the classrooms until they "feel safe." There's much more about the entire situation at the link above, but this graph also speaks volumes:

My wife frequently marvels that, while occasional parent and student led protests occur in the Chicago suburbs, demanding that schools be opened for teaching, this never occurs in Chicago--despite the well documented fact that it is precisely the students at major city schools who are being most negatively affected by the Covid Hoax shutdowns of education. I guess that speaks to a sort of Stockholm Syndrome relationship between Blue government and the subject population.

True Inequality exists in America. It's ruthlessly enforced by Progressives and embraced by their followers.

This isn't actually a photo of Catholic schoolgirls on their way to school, but when I saw it at The Federalist I thought it was somehow very appropriate: