In 2002, I became the first (and possibly last) Director of School Choice at the U.S. Department of Education. President George W. Bush had assembled a great team of reformers who sought to empower parents and children through expansion of school choice and a reduction in bureaucratic nonsense. What did I learn in those three and a half years? The agency should be bulldozed. It is a gigantic cesspool of apparatchiks who are sucking up money that should go to the students.
I was recruited for the new role by the Under Secretary of Education Gene Hickok, who retains the title of the best boss of my long career. He was looking for someone who was tough and could “be a guerilla warrior behind enemy lines.” When he asked me to take the position, he said, “You and I both realize this agency should not exist. It drains money away from schools and kids, but we can make a difference. There will be a target on your back every single day but know this—if you keep looking out for parents and kids, I will have your back.” And he did.
We worked to ensure that Congress passed opportunity scholarships for students in Washington D.C. and toiled to make federal dollars available to low income children for tutoring services chosen by their parents, and every day we used the bully pulpit of the federal government to support school choice efforts in the states. We were fought viciously at every turn by career bureaucrats at the agency who used every trick at their disposal to thwart the efforts of the political appointees. And many of those seemed to be feeding information to Democrats on the outside, including in state governments and Congress.
One day, as we were working with Speaker John Boehner to draft school choice legislation for the District of Columbia, Senator Ted Kennedy’s Chief of Staff and legislative team came to meet me at my office. They threatened me, swore, yelled, and pounded the table. “We will destroy you if you continue to move forward!” I was unmoved, for three reasons. One, it was the right thing to do. Two, I had a boss who always had my back. Three, I knew that Senator Kennedy was about to get humiliated by a radio and TV campaign back in his home district that would accuse him of blocking the schoolhouse doors to poor Black children in D.C. He was about to have a lot of problems back home, including the Catholic Church, which was very much for the D.C. vouchers. And this is where I give a shout out to a courageous school choice advocate and friend Virginia Walden Ford who was the voice for those children in the ad campaign.
As we wrote regulations and guidance to empower parents and benefit children, the bureaucrats, especially the career attorneys, would put up roadblocks, slip in troublesome language, and bring work to a halt. The agency seems designed to stop reformers from focusing on parents and children. If you have not spent time in D.C., you may not realize the extent that Democrat administrations embed their political appointees in the agencies as career “civil servants” to continue their work even during Republican administrations. Do the Republican administrations do this? Thanks to our belief in limited government, we often do not meet fire with fire.
During the Bush administration, I eventually became the deputy director of the White House Faith Based and Community Initiative Office at the U.S. Department of Education. Imagine my surprise when I found out that our staff had offices at the American Federation of Teachers building on New Jersey Avenue near the Capitol Building. When I questioned this, I was told that the Clinton administration signed a lease for offices with the AFT that was to last for many decades. Secretary McMahon’s team may want to see if this blatant money funneling to the union still exists.
There is nothing to be saved at the U.S. Department of Education. Send the money directly to the states without allowing D.C. to capture the money and redirect it to social engineering projects, special interests, and union-protected employees who do not contribute to the actual education of students.
Is there corruption and waste at the state education agencies? Yes. I saw it daily. Some state education agencies are inefficient at best and corrupt and beholden to the unions at worst, but that is another fight for another day. First, let’s eliminate the most bloated beast—the U.S. Department of Education.
My only request is, “Mr. President, may I drive the bulldozer?”
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