The worst pick since Dalibor Bagaric.
The NEA’s choice of Republican Lamar Alexander for this year’s Friend of Education award may have been the oddest choice since the Chicago Bulls picked Dalibor Bagaric.
Alexander is at the freak show now underway in Cleveland. He gave an interview to Ed Week.
Alexander and Politics K-12 have talked before about Donald Trump and education policy. And Alexander’s said he wasn’t really sure where Trump’s heart was on the issue. Does Alexander have a better sense now?
In a word, yes, he said he does. Alexander told me he had spoken with Trump about the issue, including when he met with GOP senators a few weeks ago.
Alexander told the presumptive GOP nominee that, “my hope is that if you’re elected you will enforce the new education law the way we wrote it, which is to transfer responsibility for accountability out of Washington back to the states. And [Trump] agreed with that. He said he was very much for local control. So I’m convinced he will.”
What’s more, Alexander said Trump “understands the explosion of regulations across the board in Washington, D.C., is a massive issue, bigger he said than taxes. And I agree with him on that. The jungle of red tape that smothers a lot of college administrators, that makes it harder to fill out a student aid form, that makes it difficult to repay your student loan, all of that is a deregulation, de-centralization of authority that I think he would instinctively favor, so I’m encouraged by that.”
It appears that NEA’s Friend of Education is not exactly a Republican member of the #NeverTrump movement.
Fred Klonsky 