Let Biden Pick A Teacher Union President for Education Secretary

Pre-K-20 rarely receives the attention it deserves during a presidential election, even though most Americans care deeply about the subject. Jobs, foreign affairs, government spending, and public safety are traditional big-ticket items for presidential candidates, regardless of party. Mass school closures during the Covid-19 pandemic spotlighted that a majority of families rely on in-person instruction to educate their children and to provide a safe place to learn while parents — especially women — work. Therefore, education as an economic engine in need of bipartisan federal support became more than just election year lip service.

Now that President-elect Joe Biden is nominating a leader to manage each one of his cabinet level agencies, an appointment of a secretary to lead the federal Department of Education is a hotly discussed topic in Washington and among educators, administrators, reformers, and philanthropists.

The attention an education secretary nominee receives during a season punches above its weight in the constellation of federal cabinet level agencies.

Although the U.S. government is the one of the largest employers in the country, with 2.1 million civilian workers, 2017 data from the Office of Management and Budget identify the department of education as having the smallest employee base of all 17 cabinet level agencies. It had a mere 3,842 employees, in comparison to Veterans Affairs, with more than 340,000 employees. The department’s $70 billion-plus budget also pales in comparison to what we invest in other federal agencies.

So why does this appointment gain so much national attention?

A president’s selection of an education secretary is a signal of his view about power and privilege. This ritual is not peculiar to Joe Biden or the historical nature of the 2020 election. For example, President Jimmy Carter’s nomination of Shirley Hufstedler as education secretary in 1979 signaled legal instrumentalism, and President Ronald Reagan’s nomination of Bill Bennett in 1985 signaled conservative idealism. More recently, President Barack Obama’s nomination of Arne Duncan in 2008 signaled accountability-based reformism, and President Donald Trump’s nomination of Betsy DeVos in 2016 signaled educational entrepreneurialism.

Biden’s possible nomination of former National Education Association president Lily Eskelsen García, who led the largest labor union in the United States with 3 million members from 2014–2020, to be the 12th secretary of education continues the tradition of signaling. On face value this pick signals progressive-based liberalism. This view embraces the use of the federal government as an essential engine for social change — if not its primary one. Given Biden’s commitment to put a teacher at the helm of the department in 2021, García is one person for consideration.

Yet signaling is not the most important thing about a García candidacy.

For this reason, I support giving Biden and García an opportunity to make their case for their education agenda before the U.S. Senate, and the American public.

Why?

Appointing a former educator with union president credentials and outsized influence on the culture of teaching to lead the federal education department is not without possibilities. It requires us to look at García through multiple lenses.

*García as a teacher (not a union boss): She will bring to the position more classroom experience than all 11 former secretaries combined. This includes teaching homeless and gifted students, as well as students from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. García also won the Utah Teacher of the Year award in 1989. When she left the classroom to move into management, García spent 20 years in different state and national leadership positions on behalf of teachers, which included membership on the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. If Biden wants to keep his pledge to put a teacher in charge, he will accomplish a feat no president has done since the creation of the education department in 1979.[i]

*García as a non-traditional nominee: She is when compared to education secretaries appointed by Democrats. For instance, when Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama had an opportunity to submit a nominee for secretary with deep classroom credentials in public education, none of them did. Instead each president appointed a federal judge, a former governor, a big city superintendent, or a state education chief.[ii] The qualities and experiences each nominee bought to the secretary position were assets for the education department and the president. García, who earned two education degrees, will do the same for Biden.

*García as a marketer: She can prioritize the education department’s efforts to focus on teaching as a profession rather than the professionalization of teaching. The first option focuses on educators as leaders rather than employees, looks at teaching as an art as much as a science, and makes retaining teachers as important as recruiting them to the classroom. García can advance this theme in a manner previous secretaries could not.

García as an experimenter: She could fund existing teaching and learning models that improve student achievement and support economic mobility for students enrolled in traditional public schools, or create new experimental models to do the same or better. Previous secretaries have done this. Some of the successful models highlighted by the education department are, but not exclusively limited to, public choice programs such as magnet and specialty schools. With García’s possible goal to refocus the department on the “public” in public education, her investment in existing or new educator-led entrepreneurial ideas could open new opportunities to highlight successes in our traditional public schools — where most school-age children enroll annually — while offering lessons to other types of public schools.

To be clear, my support for Biden and García having an opportunity to make their case for their education agenda is nuanced and comes with tradeoffs.

My position about a possible nomination of García is not a validation that she is the only qualified teacher who can serve as education secretary. She is not. Biden has access to a massive talent pipeline from which to select a nominee with former or current public classroom experience. This includes winners of the state and national teacher of the year award, superintendents and state chiefs, as well as nonprofit, higher education, and philanthropic executives.

My position about a possible nomination of García does not overlook intra-party politics. For starters, she has critics within the ranks of the Democratic Party, the teaching profession, and among education reformers. Some believe García is too polarizing. This is why they want Biden to nominate a unifier; meaning in this instance, someone all education coalitions agree to put into the confirmation process. The exercises of coalescing behind a single nominee, and the elusive search for an intra-party unifier, are par for the course during any transition. After all the internal debates subside, critics and supporters alike will get behind Biden’s nominee — be it García or someone else — even with some reservations.

My position about a possible nomination of García does not overlook inter-party politics, either. The democrats’ push for Biden to nominate a unifier to put into the confirmation process also includes the political calculus of getting a nominee through it. This is why some democrats believe García has an uphill battle. Why? Big-money politics. Between 1990–2020, NEA contributed at least 90 percent of its political campaign donations to democrats. This is not a trivial matter in the eyes of republicans. They have a 50–48 majority in the U.S. senate, which is the chamber responsible for confirmation of the next education secretary. García will not be confirmed on a party-line vote. If democrats win two senate seats in Georgia next month, assuming no democrat will vote against García and no republican will vote for her, she will be confirmed because Vice President-elect Kamala Harris can break a 50–50 party line vote.[iii]

Lastly, my position about García comes with knowing parental choice programs I support, such as federal grants for charter schools that enjoyed support under Presidents Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump, and the Washington, D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program that enjoyed support under Presidents Bush and Trump, will not be a priority for García. As NEA president she was one of the nation’s strongest opponents of charter school expansion and publically funded private school vouchers. I doubt that a change of heart is in the cards if she is confirmed education secretary.

In closing, Biden should be allowed to choose an education secretary who has the potential to move his ideas forward. As for me, my feet remain firmly planted in the idea that stakeholders on the left and right should take one step forward to make social, intellectual, and economic mobility a reality for millions of school-age students and adults that rely on support from the federal department of education — regardless of who occupies the seat.

[i] I acknowledge that García is not an outsider to education politics in Washington. Even still, García remains a non-traditional nominee for education secretary.

[ii] John King brought an education background and credentials to the U.S. secretary position. He earned a Masters in Teaching of social studies at Columbia Teachers College, taught high school social studies — one year in Puerto Rico and two years in a Boston public charter school — and served five years as a middle school principal of a Boston public charter school.

[iii] Read my 2017 article for an overview of the confirmation vote for John King and Betsy DeVos, and how they matched up to every education secretary confirmed for the job with 80 or more votes in the U.S. senate, or confirmed by a voice vote or unanimous consent, between 1979 and 2015.