Leaders of education and parents rights groups across the country sounded off after first lady Jill Biden claimed that her husband, President Biden, will always be "the education president."
"I knew that Joe would always be the education president, because he knows that … the success of our nation starts with you, the educators who shape our students' lives," Jill Biden told a crowd at the 2023 NEA teacher’s union’s annual meeting on Tuesday.
The first lady’s comment sparked criticism from education leaders across the country who took issue with the president’s record on education, including Sheri Few, president and founder of United States Parents Involved in Education.
"In light of who her audience was, she was probably 100% accurate when it comes to Biden supporting the liberal NEA agenda," Few told Fox News Digital in a statement. "Biden is THE most anti-parent education president in the history of this country! And he is THE education president that carries the water for the NEA.
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"He is THE education president whose Department of Justice wanted to label parents as domestic terrorists for objecting to pornography and critical Marxist theories in schools."
Few continued, "He is THE education president whose Press Secretary insisted that trans kids are ‘our kids’ and ‘belong to all of us.’ And he is THE education president who said, ‘There is no such thing as someone else’s child…Our nation’s children are all our children.’"
Jill Biden’s comment comes shortly after the "Nation’s Report Card" showed that reading and math scores for 13-year-olds dipped to their lowest rate in decades exacerbated by school closures that Biden’s critics said he encouraged.
"If being the education president means sharing a bed with the teachers' unions, locking children out of their schools for over a year and vilifying their parents for objecting, and subsequently, presiding over the total evaporation of two decades of progress in reading and math, then yes, the title fits perfectly, and he deserves a crown," Erika Sanzi, director of outreach at Parents Defending Education and a former educator, told Fox News Digital.
Dr. Jameson Taylor, American Family Association senior fellow and director of policy for AFA Action, told Fox News Digital that Biden had a "once-in-a-generation opportunity" to become "the education president" but ultimately "failed America’s kids.
"Instead, Biden took the easy way out of enabling the mediocre status quo," Taylor said. "He has also failed to prioritize the things that matter – reading, writing and math – and is preoccupied with making every school in the country comply with CRT and transgender ideologies that are compromising student safety."
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The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
