When Democratic former Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana spoke passionately to the Washington Examiner late last week in favor of charter schools, she said plenty else, not yet reported, of importance about both charters and bipartisanship.
Landrieu, an old-fashioned liberal but far from a hard leftist, was arguing against the Biden administration’s proposed new rules putting major new restrictions on charter schools. (Charter schools are publicly funded but operated independently from ordinary school bureaucracies.) She amplified a chorus of criticism of the proposals from across the political spectrum (except the extreme Left).
In so doing, Landrieu also implicitly pleaded for the type of cooperation across party lines that once was common in Washington on some issues, even as political parties fought hard on other fronts.
“If the goal of the Department of Education is to reach every child in this country with an affordable and quality education, the rules as proposed will move us in the opposite direction and reduce opportunity for millions of children,” she said. “It seems like it’s an unnecessary barrier to quality charter-school expansion when in most places the goal of charter schools is to reach children that are not being well served by the traditional public school system.”
Then Landrieu listed some of her former Democratic Senate colleagues whose past support of charter schools should make them urge Biden to rethink his proposals.
“Many Democrats helped start the public charter school movement in places like Minnesota,” she said. “In the Senate, Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar was a big supporter and Tom Carper [of Delaware] and Michael Bennett [of Colorado], Dianne Feinstein [of California], and Dick Durbin [Illinois].” Likewise, she pointed to past support from former Rep. Cedric Richmond of Louisiana, who is now a senior adviser in the Biden White House, and his replacement Troy Carter, both of whom saw New Orleans public schools successfully go 100% charter in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
“We have seen charter schools change the life chances and life trajectory of children who were left behind and marginalized by the traditional public school system,” she said. “Where public schools are working, where every school is excellent, there might not be a need to charter, but when you have districts where you have schools with graduation rates of less than 50% or proficiency ratings are low, why would any government stand in the way of another option?”
Alas, it is precisely in such failing districts that Biden’s proposals would make it much harder for charters to exist.
She also said Biden’s restrictions on charter schools run against the position of the former Obama-Biden administration.
“The very first visit out of the White House that President Obama had after he took office was to the SEED School in Washington, D.C.,” Landrieu said. “It is one of the first urban boarding schools for poor children in the country. President Obama made his first stop there. Why? To signal a powerful message that a quality education is absolutely essential for every child.”
Landrieu said she would even support expanding school choice into voucher-like systems that could support nonpublic school options, within narrowly prescribed limits. Her call for more options should be music to the ears of conservatives who long have fought for school choice.
For those who will listen, there should be a broader lesson here. Plenty of good ideas need not be grounds for ideological warfare. Landrieu voted with liberals far more often than not, but she enthusiastically worked “across the aisle” on numerous topics ranging from energy to education to military affairs. Likewise, conservative former Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama listened to liberals complain about sentencing disparities between crack-cocaine offenses and those for powder cocaine, becoming a leading reform advocate.
Examples like those once were numerous. It’s a practice, and an attitude, that ought to return. And the best place to restart bipartisanship is by convincing Biden to reconsider his proposed charter-school restrictions.
