Public Education Was the Big Loser in 2020 for Black Children!

The most progressive House Democrats must realize that the Democratic incumbents they defeated in primaries – e.g., Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez v. Joseph Crowley (Inc.), Jamaal Bowman v. Eliot Engel (Inc.), and Cori Bush v. William Lacy Clay (Inc.) – did so because their opponents lost touch with and ignored their districts because they had been in office so long they viewed their seats as personal property.

Public Education was the big loser in the 2020 elections. Amid a pandemic that has claimed over 250,000 lives, Black and low-income children of color, and others, were severely disadvantaged during the move to remote learning. With a majority of those children living in Internet deserts and/or single-parent poor households with limited supervision, public education was on hold.

In addition, K-12 education, other than in policy documents, was rarely mentioned during the presidential campaign. During that silence, the current privatization-focused Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, quietly pushed money to privately-managed charter schools and other efforts to undermine public education.

Biden has stated that he would invest in more resources for schools to enhance students’ physical and emotional development so that teachers could concentrate on their primary mission of instruction. He also targeted school safety, poverty reduction, the increase in teacher diversity, innovative schools in low-income communities, increased funding of programs for children with disabilities, the overall enhancement of technical education, and the expansion of early childhood development programs.

These promises are in stark contrast to Biden’s support of the Obama-Biden administration’s passage of Race To The Top legislation (RTTT) which mandated Draconian accountability measures for teachers and unrestrained increases in unregulated charter schools, denying states access to additional funding if they did not submit to these standards.

Teacher unions played defense of K-12 public education during the eight-year term of the Obama-Biden administration and begrudgingly endorsed the ticket twice as the lesser of two evils. However, perhaps Obama’s most egregious action was declining to appoint Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond to head the Department of Education after intense opposition from the pro-privatization billionaire Cartel that considered her too supportive of teachers and unions.

It instead promoted Arne Duncan, a close friend of President Obama who championed the growth of Chicago’s charter schools while serving as CEO of the Chicago Public Schools. At the behest of the Cartel and with their funding, Duncan established a large number of them.

Dr. Darling-Hammond, who chaired Obama’s education transition team (and is also serving in that same role for President-Elect Biden) is, perhaps, America’s most distinguished K-12 educator in theory and practice. She has been a public school teacher, Senior Social Scientist at the RAND Corporation, and Professor at Columbia and Stanford Universities, serving as Dean of the School of Education at the latter.

She has published 20 books and over 500 articles and is well regarded by educators at every level. Darling-Hammond has led policy work on equity, quality and teaching; learning and teaching standards; and has worked with hundreds of schools and districts around the nation on studying, developing, and scaling up new model schools and launching preparation programs for teachers and leaders in public and higher education.

Although an impressive array of individuals has been proposed for appointment as Biden’s Secretary of Education, Darling-Hammond would be the best choice by far.

Her 2010 groundbreaking book, The Flat World and Education (How America’s Commitment To Equity Will Determine Our Future), critiques the rapid racial transformation of the nation’s public school students now making the K-12 population majority-minority. Thus, she is uniquely positioned to meet the challenges the nation will face head on as the next Education Secretary and has the abilities and skills needed to clean up the educational debris Betsy DeVos left behind.

The single presidential term of Donald Trump has left education, and the nation overall, in chaos, disunity, debt, and with a public health crisis. This perilous educational period demands someone who is equipped with a broad skill-set and professional experience, who can hit the ground running and salvage the educational futures of generations to come. Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond would meet that challenge.

As the nation’s population moves toward majority-minority status, with many of its citizens in dire economic straits, it is imperative that President-Elect Joe Biden appoint an Education Secretary who can give public education an upgrade after its four-year loss of resources, standing, and prospects. It is time for a K-12 education revival for the profession and for us all.