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| Achievement First Photo |
Presidential cabinet members, we all know, serve at the pleasure of the president. For some odd reason, the Attorney General’s office is supposed to stand as an exception to the rule, possibly because many Americans do not wish the institutions over which the Attorney General presides, such as the FBI, to be used to punish in a partisan manner the president’s political opponents.
That is more often a consummation devoutly to be wished than
a practical reality. There is little indication that President Barack Obama’s
Attorney General from 2009 to 2015, Eric Holder, the first U.S. Attorney
General in history to be held in both criminal and civil contempt
by the US House, was at any time during the Obama administration other than a
true and faithful servant of his liege lord.
Other cabinet members, however, are expected to pull at the
partisan oars, and this is as it should be.
It seems reasonable to ask – what is the pleasure of the
president-elect concerning education, and will his choice of Connecticut's own Michael Cardona as
Education Secretary suit his purpose?
According to much of the commentary following Biden’s
selection of Cardona, the answer to the question – Will Cardona be a true and
faithful servant of Biden? – is yes. In part, questions concerning Biden’s
pleasure may be deduced from his selection.
Cardona is a champion of public education. National
Public Radio, a faithful barometer of opinion on the left, even as
National Review is a faithful barometer of opinion on the right, notes in a
recent posting: “Cardona would replace Betsy DeVos, the education
secretary during the four years of the Trump administration. DeVos has
been a big proponent of school choice and often advocated for private and
religious schools. Cardona is certainly a rebuke to that. He is a product of
public schools, where he's worked his entire career.”
The heads of teacher unions do not enjoy competition
presented by charter schools such as the Amistad Academy in New Haven,
Connecticut, the mother-school of Achievement First, a network of 32 public
charter schools in Connecticut, New York and Rhode Island serving students in
grades K-12.
In a 2016 posting, “A Pedagogical Flower Blooms In New Haven”,
Connecticut Commentary noted the success of Achievement First schools in
Connecticut: “The unemployment rate among students with less than a high school
education is 11 percent -- but only 2 percent among those who have acquired
more than a high school degree; 100 percent of the students enrolled in an
Achievement First public charter school will gain acceptance to a college or
university; 97 percent will matriculate; 50 percent are projected to graduate
from college. This last figure may seem slight to some, but in fact the
percentage is larger than that of college graduates who had attended school at
some of Connecticut's most prestigious and successful high schools.”
Also noted was a conspicuous fly in the ointment: “In
Connecticut – but significantly not in New York and Rhode Island – state
financing is set about 17
percent lower than public school financing. And that is why
Achievement First will not in the future be expanding
in Connecticut.”
What are Biden’s – and derivatively Cardona’s – intentions towards successful charter schools that draw from the same general student pool poorly serviced by some inner city public schools? Under the thumbs of Cardona and Biden, the titular head of the national Democrat Party, will successful non-public educational institutions such as Achievement First and urban Catholic schools thrive or wither on the vine? The last Catholic elementary school in Hartford closed its doors in 2016.
“School choice options for Connecticut students – magnets,
charters and other schools of choice – have increased steadily” CTMirror noted
in 2017. “Ten years ago, nearly 34,000 students were attending non-traditional
public schools they had to apply to – one in 17 public school students. Last
school year, just over 66,500 students attended schools of choice, or one in
eight students.”
The figures demonstrate that, allowed alternative choices in
education, parents of students receiving an inferior education in public
schools will vote with their feet and send their students to more competent institutions
if – big “if” -- they are available. The availability of alternative
educational possibilities depends ultimately upon what Tennessee Williams
called in “A Streetcar Named Desire” the “kindness of strangers.”
Neither Biden nor Cardona can plausibly claim to be
strangers to the misery caused by failing public schools. The conspicuous
failure of some inner city public schools cannot be resolved by increasing the financing
of failing schools. Incompetence should not be rewarded by throwing tax dollars
at it. Defunding failure and rewarding success through tax dollars is a more
certain route to a superior educational product.
Even a first grader can figure that one out. And the continuing
exodus of students from poor public schools demonstrates that the parents of
students condemned to poverty by an inadequate education financed by a dizzyingly
uncomprehending state understand it as well.
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