I somehow missed a story that appeared in Education Week last February, identifying the background of Biden appointees to the U.S. Department of Education. What is interesting about the story, aside from knowing who the appointees are, is what is not said about DFER, the hedge-fund managers’ lobby for charter schools and high-stakes teachers’ evaluation, and Chiefs for Change, founded by Jeb Bush to promote privatization and high-stakes testing.

Andrew Ujifusa wrote:

The latest round of political appointees to the U.S. Department of Education include a veteran of Capitol Hill and Beltway education groups, the former leader of Democrats for Education Reform’s District of Columbia affiliate, and two former Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation staffers…

Jessica Cardichon, deputy assistant secretary, office of planning, evaluation, and policy development. Cardichon is an education policy veteran in Washington. She comes to the Education Department from the Learning Policy Institute, a K-12 policy and research group founded and led by Linda Darling-Hammond, who led Biden’s transition team for the department. Cardichon was the group’s federal policy director. While at LPI, Cardichon contributed to reports about COVID-19 relief, how to “reimagine schooling,” and student access to certified teachers. 

She’s also worked as education counsel to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on the Senate education committee; the Alliance for Excellent Education, a research and advocacy group, and at Teachers College, Columbia University. A long-time ally of teachers’ unions and a critic of standardized testing, Sanders has taken on a big role in the Senate during the creation of a new COVID-19 relief package.

I was invited to serve on the federal policy transition team, which Cardichon chaired. The members were asked to offer recommendations for Biden for Day 1, Day 100, and One Year. I proposed that Biden announce two changes: 1) a halt in the annual mandated standardized testing; 2) a revision of the Every Student Succeeds Act to make the ban on federally mandated annual testing of every child permanent; 3) a halt in the funding of the federal Charter Schools Program, which spends $440 million every year to fund charters, almost 40% of which either never open or close soon after opening. Cardichon offered no support for any of these proposals. They were never discussed by the committee. After being stonewalled repeatedly, I resigned from the committee. Not surprisingly, none of those three recommendations has been on the Biden agenda.

Ramin Taheri, chief of staff, office for civil rights. Taheri comes to the department after serving as the District of Columbia chapter director of Democrats for Education Reform, a group that promotes charter schools, K-12 education funding, test-based teacher and school accountability, and other policies. The group divides opinion in the left-leaning K-12 policy space. Some have championed the group for focusing on issues they say will better served students of color and disadvantaged learners, while other claim DFER undermines teachers’ unions and traditional public schools. News that DFER was backing certain big-city superintendents to be Biden’s education secretary provoked pushback from union supporters and others skeptical of DFER. (Cardona was not on DFER’s list of preferred choices.) Taheri has also worked at Chiefs for Change, a group of district superintendents that provokes similar, if not identical, political sentiments.

Ujifusa does not explain that DFER was created by hedge-funders who are passionate about charter schools, high-stakes teacher evaluations, merit pay, and union-busting. Nor does he mention that Chiefs for Change is a rightwing group founded by Jeb Bush to promote the Florida “model” of privatization and high-stakes testing. The agenda of DFER and Chiefs for Change is not centrist; it is rightwing.

Nick Lee, deputy assistant secretary, office of planning, evaluation, and policy development; Sara Garcia, special assistant, office of planning, evaluation, and policy development. Both Lee and Garcia come to the department from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where Lee was a senior program officer and Garcia was a program officer....

The Gates Foundation has had a long, complex, and controversial involvement in education policy. For many years, it focused its considerable grant-making power on teacher effectiveness, teacher-performance systems, and support for the Common Core State Standards; by 2015, the foundation estimated it had put $900 million in grants toward teacher policy and programs. Previously, it had focused on supporting small high schools. These efforts became more politically controversial over time. 

Supporters have applauded its focus on educators and improving instruction, while critics say its outsized influence has had a detrimental effect on policymakers. A 2018 study of one of its biggest teacher-effectiveness efforts in three districts showed no gains for students.

A few years back, a reporter at Education Week wrote an article about the outsized role of the Gates Foundation in shaping federal education policy; the reporter said it was almost impossible to find anyone to criticize the foundation’s role because almost every organization in D.C. was funded by Gates.