In mid-December, the NY Times‘ Jonathan Martin interviewed Montana Senator Jon Tester about his new book, Grounded: A Senator’s Lessons on Winning Back Rural America. Tester, a Democrat and U.S. Senator in his third term, represents a deep red state.
Tester tells Martin: “Democrats can really do some positive things in rural America just by talking about infrastructure and what they’re doing for infrastructure, particularly in the area of broadband. And then I would say one other policy issue is how some Republicans want to basically privatize public education. That is very dangerous, and I think it’s a point that people don’t want to see their public schools close down in Montana.”
Although I now live in an inner-ring suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, I grew up in in Havre, Montana, 35 miles up the road from Tester’s farm just outside of Big Sandy. As I read that NY Times interview, I was particularly interested in Tester’s statement about the threat school privatization poses in rural communities, which is why I was surprised and delighted to find a copy of Tester’s book wrapped up for me under the Christmas tree.
Many hope President Joe Biden’s administration will significantly reshape federal education policy. During last year’s campaign for President, Biden, the candidate, declared a public education agenda that contrasts sharply with what happened to federal policy in public education beginning in the 1990s and culminating in the 2002 No Child Left Behind and later in 2009 in Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top. Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire describe the past couple of decades: “Together, led by federal policy elites, Republicans and Democrats espoused the logic of markets in the public sphere, expanding school choice through publicly CONTINUE READING: Montana’s Senator Jon Tester Says Democrats Can Win in Red States By Prioritizing Public Education | janresseger
