We respect Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, who was a pretty good school superintendent back in the day. Unfortunately, the secretary’s missteps and misstatements show that he needs to retake American Government 101. Take his recent post on X: “I’ve said it once and I will say it again, parents don’t want politicians dictating what their children can learn, think and believe. That’s not how public education is supposed to work in a free country.”
As school-choice supporters, we agree with Secretary Cardona to an extent. In a free society, parents should be able to choose their child’s school, and most parents do want that. But that is not what the secretary is advocating. He, and many other overzealous defenders of the public-education establishment, have lamented the increasing pushback from the political center and right, labeling efforts to shape curriculum as “book bans” and decrying efforts to limit divisive, zero-sum racial ideologies such as critical race theory. This is the context in which we understand his post. (But Secretary Cardona should feel free to write back to set us straight.)
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