Don’t leave kids’ education up to the bureaucrats
“I wouldn’t trust you to care for a houseplant, let alone my child.” — Rep Ayanna Pressley to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
Finally, Pressley and I agree on something.
Rep. Pressley threw down on Secretary DeVos over the federal Department of Education’s push to get American children back in the classroom this fall.
“You have no plan,” Pressley complained to DeVos via Twitter. “Teachers, kids and parents are fearing for their lives. You point to a private sector that has put profits over people and claimed the lives of thousands of essential workers.”
Pressley’s right. Who is Betsy DeVos to say whether your child should be back in class? How does she know what’s best for schools in Massachusetts? Or the city of Boston? Or, most importantly, your child?
In fact, why is there a federal Department of Education pushing around our local schools at all? C’mon, Ayanna — let’s shut that sucker down! Ayanna?
Oh, that’s right. Rep. Pressley doesn’t object to bumbling D.C. bureaucrats telling you how to educate your kids. She just objects when it’s a Republican like Betsy DeVos doing the bumbling.
Like all her progressive pals, Pressley is completely fine with federal and state government mandates over parents and schools, such as that outlined in her Ending Pushout Act, which would establish $2.5 billion in grants for states and schools to provide educators with implicit bias training, invest in counselors and social workers, and adjust school discipline policies. To be eligible for the grants, schools would have to ban suspensions and expulsions for being late or chronically absent and for “minor infractions” like going against grooming policies.
The Pressley problem isn’t that she doesn’t trust DeVos to raise your kids. It’s that she and other progressives don’t trust you to raise them, either.
In New Hampshire,
Republican Gov. Chris Sununu announced Tuesday that he’s leaving the decision over how local schools should educate their kids in the fall — in class, online or a hybrid of both — up to the local school districts.
Local Democrats were horrified. They demanded the governor issue state-enforced edicts over wearing masks, bus seating, social distancing and the like. How dare he let local parents and educators decide for themselves what will work best in their own classrooms? Why, it’s an outrage!
Even more annoying, the Diocese of Manchester announced last week they’re going back to classroom education at their schools, and any parent who wants the same for their kids can get a $1,000 incentive check for making the switch.
That horrifies progressives even more. Giving parents choice? Unheard of.
Massachusetts teachers unions released a proposal this week calling for “transforming public education,” arguing that if schools go back to their pre-COVID-19 performance “we will fail our students and families.”
They’re right, of course. Our public schools have been a dismal failure for years, despite taxpayers dumping more and more money into them. As Corey
DeAngelis of the Reason Foundation reports, inflation-adjusted spending on public schools has gone up 280% since 1960.
Student performance, alas, has not.
Boston Public Schools are so lousy that the vast majority of graduates have to take remedial classes to attend community college. When they do, only a handful of them manage to graduate.
So, yes, let’s transform the schools. But let’s don’t leave the transformation to the same failed union hacks and government goons who failed in the first place.
Why don’t we — and I know this is going to sound crazy — let the parents control their kids’ education? Pick the best school for each individual child, whether it’s public, private or parochial?
That’s one way to stick it to the federal Department of Education — and every other bureaucrat between you and what’s best for your family.