The Education of Joe Biden
/“We are witnessing the failure of Reagan to keep his 1980 campaign promise to abolish the Dept. of Education--and the Dept. of Energy. In other words, Republicans talk a good game of limited government but have preserved the status quo--that's why they are conservatives and not radicals for liberty.
If Reagan or any of his GOP presidential successors had an ounce of limited government principles, one of them would have abolished the DOE, and there would be no angst over who would be the next Education Secretary. “
- Prof. Sabrin, Ph. D
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Is he really going to nominate the head of a teachers union for his cabinet?
Joe Biden at his election-night party in Wilmington, Del., Nov. 4.
PHOTO:STEFANI REYNOLDS/BLOOMBERG NEWS
You might not know it today, but for much of his life Joe Biden was friendly to real, if modest, education reform. As a senator, he supported holding states and schools accountable for their students’ performance, expanding public-school choice and increasing federal funding for charter schools and their facilities. In 1997, he even gave a floor speech in which he said that the plight of children “presently caught in a failed public school” was leading him to reconsider his votes against private-school vouchers. As Barack Obama’s vice president, he loyally promoted an agenda that pushed teacher evaluations and charters.
All that went out the window when Mr. Biden entered the 2020 race. During his campaign, he promised to appoint a teacher as education secretary. Now the talk is that Mr. Biden will appoint not only a teacher but the head of a teachers union. The two names most often mentioned are American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten and former National Education Association President Lily Eskelsen García.
Everyone has understood that a Biden Education Department would mark a change of direction from the past four years. But to elevate to education secretary someone whose career has been spent fighting any reform aimed at relaxing the teachers unions’ stranglehold on the public schools would be an astonishingly bleak admission about whose interests come first.
