Tuesday, September 12, 2017 (Washington, D.C.) NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia was the featured speaker at the National Press Club last Friday, and served up a heaping portion of partisanship. The President, she said “creates fear in children, and that is unforgivable.” Then with a straight face, she added, “For me, this is not partisan. I’m from Utah.” Where, we might add, she ran for Congress as a Democrat.
She hailed passage of ESSA in 2015 as “the last time Congress got together and did a good thing for kids.” She might have mentioned the bipartisan vote in the Illinois legislature this month, in which majorities of both parties voted to create a new tax credit program for school vouchers in that deep blue state, but the NEA and its affiliates fought fiercely against it, and that would not have fit their narrative.