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Cardona And Biden’s Pleasure

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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