Joe Biden is in the Pocket of the Teacher Unions

It should no longer be a surprise to anyone that Joe Biden isn’t campaigning to be president for the American people. His loyalty lies with unions, the radical left, and Hollywood elites.

The latest example of Biden’s willingness to put America last? His speech to the National Education Association in a plea for their endorsement last Friday.

From the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board:

Mr. Biden, seeking the NEA’s endorsement at a virtual assembly on Friday, pledged his fealty to the union, noting that his wife, Jill, is a member. “When we win this election, we’re going to get the support you need and the respect you deserve,” Mr. Biden said. “You don’t just have a partner in the White House, you’ll have an NEA member in the White House. And if I’m not listening, I’m going to be sleeping alone in the Lincoln Bedroom.”

If a Republican presidential candidate spoke to a special-interest group with that kind of amorous devotion, the caterwauling in the press would never end. Or what about this line from Mr. Biden: “This is going to be a teacher-oriented Department of Education.” Oh, not a student-oriented one?

Mr. Biden didn’t get a question about school choice during the Friday forum, but he has made clear that he believes the union dogma. “No privately funded charter school—or private charter school—would receive a penny of federal money,” he told the NEA in March, when it endorsed him in the Democratic primary.

This is a marked departure. The Obama Administration increased federal funds for charter schools. From 2000 to 2017, the share of public-school students who attended a charter rose to 6% from 1%. Behind these statistics are thousands of stories of children, many of them black and Hispanic, who escaped failing public schools to get a better education.

Mr. Biden seems downright eager to repudiate this record. He told the NEA on Friday that his plan involves “higher salaries for educators,” “universal pre-K,” and “tripling the funding for Title I schools.” He pledged to “double the number of school psychologists and counselors and nurses and social workers in school,” and to “help educators wipe out the burden of their own student debt.”

Teachers first. Put it on a bumper sticker, Mr. Biden, and hope people don’t notice the corollary is that students, and especially poor and minority students, come second.