In Tuesday’s press briefing, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki walked back President Biden’s pledge to reopen schools within 100 days. Psaki announced the new goal is to have "teaching at least one day a week in the majority of schools by day 100."
That’s a dramatic shift from what Biden was promising just a few weeks ago. In December, Biden made the sweeping pledge that “my team will work to see that the majority of our schools can be open by the end of my first 100 days,” suggesting an appetite to show leadership on the issue. But on his first day in office, Biden walked back that goal to include only K-8 schools, not high schools. And then on Tuesday, Psaki narrowed it much further, stipulating that a school could be considered “open” if it offered only one day of in-person instruction per week, and that 51 percent of schools would constitute a meaningful “majority.”
That significant retreat moves the goalposts on reopening and shows the administration has far less ambitious expectations for schools this year. Given that Biden’s first 100 days end in April, Biden would count schools offering about 5 to 7 days of in-person instruction before the end of the school year as “open.”
More than that, moving the goalposts to 51 percent of schools sets a goal that has probably already been reached. Last week, Burbio, a research organization that tracks school district calendars, found that 58 percent of the nation’s K-12 students are enrolled in a school offering at least some in-person instruction.
Biden’s diminished ambition is a stunning abdication of his main tool to get schools open: the bully pulpit. With no direct power to force any school district to close or reopen, Biden could be showing the leadership he promised by using his perch in the White House to cajole and persuade sluggish districts that safe reopening is possible.
Reopening decisions are fraught and controversial, but there’s plenty of room for leadership here and a large base of evidence showing that, with basic mitigation strategies, kids can safely go back to school. For example, researchers at Tulane University recently found no evidence that reopening schools increases COVID-19 hospitalizations among the 75 percent of counties with low hospitalization rates. In another instance, CDC researchers analyzed 17 Wisconsin schools that had reopened with mandatory mask-wearing and social distancing, and found that spread of the virus "among students and staff members was lower than in the county overall." As a JAMA article summarized, "There has been little evidence that schools have contributed meaningfully to increased community transmission."
Biden’s abdication of the bully pulpit is especially unfortunate because the people most receptive to hearing his voice — his base in blue states and blue cities and among reopening-resistant teachers unions — are also the most likely to have their local schools remain closed. An October AEI report found that blue states were twice as likely as red states to offer only remote instruction and about four times less likely to offer full-time, in-person instruction. These broad trends have remained stubborn over the course of the year.
While Biden has turned squishy on school reopening, there’s one area that he’s held firm: that schools need more money. Before his inauguration, Biden proposed a gargantuan $130 billion aid package for schools — including $60 billion to ensure there are no layoffs this year and next — on top of the billions in emergency aid already passed during the Trump administration. Democrats haven’t backed down from that number: On Monday, House Education Committee Chairman Bobby Scott released a $129 billion aid proposal closely mirroring Biden’s request, ignoring Republican pleas for a much smaller package.
If Biden were pushing hard for full-time, 5-day-per-week school reopening, this massive aid package might make a bit more sense. Instead, Biden is pressing for a windfall of money while asking schools to do little in return. That’s a tragic mistake. A McKinsey and Company study has estimated that students will be 5-10 months behind their expected academic progress at the end of this school year, and that doesn’t even consider the long-term social and emotional learning issues sure to affect students.
Biden’s backtracking shows that reopening schools isn’t actually the priority he once asserted it was, and it raises serious questions about whether Biden or his education secretary Miguel Cardona will stand up to their base when the moment calls for it. In the wake of Tuesday’s press conference, it seems that reopening schools in 100 days was more a political soundbite than an essential goal for Biden to lead on.
Nat Malkus is the deputy director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. RJ Martin is the program manager of education at AEI.