You think in rich states (like california) with liberal, democratic legislation and liberal governors that the political parties are the ones keeping schools from being effective?

Why can private schools run perfectly fine without unions?

Because when a kid is truly problematic, they can kick them out, and kicking them out means kicking them into the public school system? The public school system has to either spend a disproportionate amount of time/money on troubled children or completely neglect them. Private schools can do the math to decide if the child is profitable, and kick them out if they are not.

It feels very disingenuous to try to make an argument about teacher's unions and then use private non-union schools made up of those who can afford the tuition or qualify for a merit based scholarship and public schools made up of everyone else.