Wall Street Journal Editor Dan Henninger: The DeVos Conflagration Told Us About the Battle Lines and Issues Of Public Schools In Inner Cities
Today Deputy Editor of The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial page and Wonder Land columnist for The Wall Street Journal Dan Henninger joined Kilmeade and Friends to discuss his latest piece in the WSJ “The DeVos Apocalypse.” In his piece he writes, “The DeVos confirmation appeared to be a standard partisan conflict between Democrats and Republicans… but something deeper was at stake here, which is why the Democrats raised the nomination for a second level cabinet post to a political apocalypse.”
In his interview with Brian Kilmeade, Henninger elaborated on why he believes the Democratic party has been so resistant to not only Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, but to public-school alternatives and most reforms in general. He says:
The focus of my column was what the DeVos battle, the conflagration told us about the battle lines and the issues of public schools in inner cities. The DeVos thing was built into this woman who was against public schools, favors Christian schools, I think what got lost in it all is the fact that what we are talking about is the reality that in the inner cities of the United States… We all know there are these impacted neighborhoods where black families live, they’ve lived there for generations, and the schools they go to don’t give their kids a decent education. Those are public schools, and Betsy Devos represents the alternatives that have grown up since about 1990. Charter schools and vouchers that allow students to go to private schools or parochial Catholic schools. The division there is not merely between Democrats and Republicans, but this is the way it looked in the Congress because every single Democrat Senator voted against her, but in fact many democrats who aren’t part of the professional Democratic party have joined the charter movement and the voucher movement.
Henninger also commented on reports that his colleague Rebecca Blumenstein, deputy editor in chief of The Wall Street Journal, has been named a deputy managing editor of The New York Times. Henninger said, ”
She’s a straight shooter. Rebecca plays it down the middle. Editors like Rebecca Blumenstein are one of the reasons The Wall Street Journal’s news columns are pretty much straight down the middle and have earned a lot of credibility over the years. And it’s editors like Rebecca that ensure that our paper has credibility, and if something like that could happen at The Times I think American journalism would be better for it, but it will be a challenge for her.”
Listen below to hear the full interview:
