It's so hopeful to see that the new administration will prioritize public education, expanding federal education laws, civil rights, providing relief to our schools struggling through the pandemic, including more cautious reopening plans relative to the current, chaotic administration. I'm very excited about the incoming administration and it's clear willingness to readily redirect DeVos's policies and pro-charter school priorities, beginning with cutting the funding to for-profit charters that have robbed public education of much-needed dollars.
If our communities prefer such schools, it's often because they are not given good options or much actual choice, particularly in light of the neoliberal push to shame and blame schools through ratings that justify their closures, handing them over to education management organizations (EMOs), as districts work to balance their budgets. Public education, that involves elective boards and democratic governance need to become those places of choice for parents and children. After all, they are the bedrock of our democracy and are the best use of our hard-earned tax dollars.
-Angela Valenzuela
Mr. Biden this summer reshaped the Democratic platform to embrace a ban on federal funding for for-profit charters, and to call for cutting funding to underperforming charters run by nonprofit organizations.
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has presented an education agenda that is starkly different from the Trump era, beginning with a far more cautious approach to school reopenings.
WASHINGTON — Like most federal agencies, the Education Department followed President Trump’s lead in seeking to undo the legacy of his predecessor, and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos diligently tore into President Barack Obama’s policies.
[Read More: What Biden’s election could mean for your student loans.]
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr’s administration is planning to return the favor.
The contrasts in Trump-era education policy and the incoming Biden administration’s agenda are stark. Ms. DeVos, a lifelong booster of private schools and longtime opponent of the teachers’ unions, set out to reduce the Education Department’s footprint by proposing cuts to public school funding and narrowing the department’s enforcement role of federal education laws and civil rights.
The incoming first lady, Jill Biden, is a community college professor and member of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union. The Biden administration has promised to drastically increase resources for public schools, expand its civil rights advocacy for marginalized students and reassert the department’s leadership in policymaking.
And on the most pressing issue facing education, reopening schools during the pandemic, the Biden administration has signaled an about-face.
The Trump administration has demanded that schools reopen, despite severe budget constraints and confusing public health guidelines, while the Education Department has all but absolved itself of tracking the virus’s impact and offering solutions. The Biden campaign has promised deep federal involvement to help schools secure more relief funding and navigate the effects of the pandemic, which has devastated the academic trajectory of the most vulnerable students.
But the president-elect’s closeness with the powerful teachers’ unions has raised concerns. Unions have come under fire from parents and school leaders who say their opposition to in-person instruction conflicts with science and students’ well-being. Ms. DeVos has seized on the tension, posting a series of articles on Twitter that have questioned the unions’ roles.
“When unions win, kids lose,” she said this week.
With a likely Republican Senate and a narrow Democratic majority in the House, Mr. Biden will struggle to muster the support he needs in Congress to accomplish some of his loftiest policy goals. He has promised to bolster funding for special education, institute universal prekindergarten and triple funding for a federal program that helps schools serving high concentrations of students from low-income families, devoting some of that funding to increasing teacher salaries. In higher education, he has promised free public college, expanding the amount of federal financial aid grants for low-income students and canceling some student debt.
Stef Feldman, the Biden campaign’s policy director, told reporters last month that the administration was “confident” Mr. Biden would “be able to get some big, bold education legislation passed and certainly immediate relief for our schools and our educators, but that doesn’t mean that we’re not also going to take executive action within existing authority.”
Those actions could come quickly.
