I have seen more grassroots anger towards school districts and teachers unions in the past year than I can remember in the past decade.

Parents' willingness to scrutinize teachers union priorities and practices is particularly eye-opening.

You'd have to go back a long way -- 2010, maybe -- to find a period during which the traditional system and its most powerful stakeholders were under this kind of public scrutiny.

The difference is that now the concerns seem to be more grassroots.

One obvious factor is that teachers unions have played such a massive public role in states and districts where they have power, pressuring schools to shut down, determining the shape of remote learning, and insisting on safety measures before reopening.

The last time I can think of that teachers exerted their power so dramatically was 1968, when the NYC teachers union shut down the system.

Speaking of which, here's my latest at Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexanderrusso/2021/01/14/teachers-unions-then--now/?sh=79d4d476c7c6