“With AFT and NEA’s help, we won this election”

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The winner of the most-hated member of the Trump administration’s cabinet may be the Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. Her strongly conservative ideas on public and private education have greatly agitated the union-supporting Democrats who are in charge of our country’s schools.

Once Joe Biden’s administration comes into power, you can kiss school choice goodbye. Betsy DeVos made it her mission to increase school choice, especially for underprivileged children trapped in failing schools. This is the last thing teacher unions want. Teacher unions want families under their thumb, left with no options for which might work best for their children and families. The union leaders want power from the top down where one size fits all and the federal government knows what is best for school children across the country, not local parents and teachers in each community. This speaks directly to the differences between conservatives and liberals (or socialists and Marxists).

The teacher unions have become a political fundraising branch of the Democrat Party. Teachers allegedly teach all students without a political agenda on display though we know that is not true. Presidential candidates running on the Democrat ticket know that they must have the support of the union leadership in order to win elections. This year both ATF (American Teacher Foundation) and NEA (National Education Association) take credit for working so diligently for Joe Biden’s election. Jill Biden held a video conference call with all the players to thank them for their hard work and support. A Twitter thread was created about the video call and it is as cringeworthy as any conservative person would expect.

Here is Jill:

Ugh.

It is reported that there are two frontrunners for the position of Secretary of Education in the Biden/Harris administration. Biden hasn’t been bold enough, yet, to come out and say he will get rid of school choice. Both frontrunners will promote anti-charter school choice, though. Former president of the NEA, Lily Eskelsen Garcia is believed to be a frontrunner because she is most likely to be confirmed by Republicans in the Senate. She claims to be a supporter of charter schools, somewhat anyway, but she is all about limiting them, mostly over the funding that is taken from public schools to support them.

Garcia responded to the largely unchecked growth of charter schools under the Obama administration by issuing a new policy statement in 2016 that drew a line between “unaccountable” privately owned charter schools and charter schools that have benefited public school education, calling them a “failed and damaging experiment.”

In an attempt to grant low income students the ability to seek education outside of their often low-performing school disctricts, the Obama administration more than doubled the number of charter schools in the U.S. from 4,600 schools attended by 1.4 million students in 2008, to more than 7,000 charter schools with a near 3 million student enrollment by 2016, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Garcia is an ardent supporter of increasing charter school accountability while limiting the number of schools available to ensure that funding for public schools is not negatively impacted.

“Charter schools were started by educators who dreamed of schools in which they would be free to innovate, unfettered by bureaucratic obstacles,” García said in a 2017 statement while president of the NEA. “Handing over students’ education to privately managed, unaccountable charters jeopardizes student success, undermines public education and harms communities.”

Another frontrunner is Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers. She likely has little chance of being confirmed by Republicans in the Senate.

Weingarten was an ardent supporter of Warren during her presidential bid because of the senator’s K-12 education proposal, which omitted federal funding from charter schools, reported USA Today.

“She gets it,” Weingarten told the publication in October 2019 when Warren was still in the running. “We won’t be in the streets, we will be in our schools making America what it ought to be.”

Weingarten participated in a four-day citywide teacher strike in Chicago last year, to protest a lack in teachers pay, classroom sizes and staffing needs.

How did that strike work out? Children were denied education for four days and parents scrambled to make arrangements for their children but, hey, teachers hit the street to provide some drama, right? It’s never really about the needs of the children, is it?

It’s unclear yet if Biden can get a secretary through a Senate vote who will not support charter schools. Biden says he’ll fill his cabinet with diverse views, including some conservative members, it is unlikely that conservative voices will prevail in his education policy initiatives. His wife is no conservative and she will be the strongest voice he listens to, having promised the teacher unions they will have a friend in the White House because of Jill Biden during the campaign. Jill was happy to criticize DeVos and Trump on the campaign trail.

Perhaps Jill should talk to teacher union members about helping get the schools back open. Many communities are trying to reopen schools only to have teachers go on strike and refuse to go back into the classroom.





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