Is one day a week enough? Biden’s school reopening goal draws blowback

President Joe Biden is being accused of backpedaling on his pledge to reopen the nation’s schools after the White House added fine print to his promise and made clear that a full reopening is still far from sight.

Biden’s initial pledge in December was to reopen “the majority of our schools” in his first 100 days in office. In January he specified that the goal applied only to schools that teach through 8th grade. And this week the White House said that schools will be considered opened as long as they teach in-person at least one day a week.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki defended the goal Wednesday, calling it part of a “bold ambitious agenda.” But she also said it’s a bar the administration hopes to exceed.

“Certainly, we are not planning to celebrate at 100 days if we reach that goal,” she said. “We certainly hope to build from that.”

The White House had faced increasing pressure to explain the goal as the reopening debate gains urgency. Biden had never detailed what it meant to be reopened or how he would define success. Pressed on the question Tuesday, Psaki clarified that one day a week of in-person learning would meet the mark.

“His goal that he set is to have the majority of schools — so, more than 50 percent — open by day 100 of his presidency,” she said. “And that means some teaching in classrooms. So, at least one day a week. Hopefully, it’s more.”

The goal drew criticism from Republicans who said Biden is setting the bar too low. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy called it unacceptable and said schools are ready to open now. Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo., a former teacher, said the goal falls short of what students need.

“Having only 51 percent of our schools reopen for as little as one day a week is not a ‘success,’ ” she said. “We should be working to safely get all of our children back to full-time, in-person learning”

With the new caveat, the pledge appears much less ambitious than what Biden signaled when he first made it. In December, it seemed his promise was to reopen half of the nation’s more than 130,000 schools. When it was narrowed to K-8 schools only, the scope decreased to include the roughly 90,000 schools below high school.

Now, critics say, the goal has been moved so low it may already have been met. Data from Burbio, a service that tracks school opening plans, recently reported that 58 percent of K-12 students are learning in-person to some degree.

“The administration doesn’t have to exert much effort to meet this goal,” said Jonathan Butcher, an education fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

Tracking progress on the goal has been difficult due to a lack of federal data on the topic. Last week the Biden administration said it will begin collecting data from 7,000 schools showing whether they are operating online, in-person or in a combination. The Trump administration declined to gather that data, saying it wasn’t the federal government’s responsibility.