Textbook hypocrisy

Class, remember our lessons on political shamelessness? Let’s review. U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who as a private citizen championed virtual schooling despite its stubbornly poor achievement results, now echoes President Trump as he threatens to slash federal funding for school districts like New York City that do not fully reopen buildings in the fall for fear of reigniting the coronavirus pandemic here.

Meanwhile, DeVos heralds as “great examples” of COVID-19-era educational innovation the charter schools run by Success Academies. Except — oops — Success is smartly sticking with part-at-home, part-inperson learning this fall, just as district-run schools are, rather than putting their scholars’ families at risk.

Locally, Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Richard Carranza are correctly promising families the right to learn at home, while telling those who wish to send their kids they’ll get one to three days a week of inperson instruction, mainly depending on individual buildings’ capacity.

But as they purportedly move heaven and earth to get the complicated new model up and running, have they considered putting up tents and converting schoolyards and even streets into open-air classrooms to maximize learning capacity without risking COVID spread?

And have local and national leaders seriously thought through doing the one thing that might actually let kids and teachers safely return in full this fall, which is rapid testing of every student and educator every morning? Portable tests that deliver results in 15 minutes have gotten emergency FDA approval. What would it take to get them online?

Anyone? Bueller?