As we prepare for the inauguration of Joseph R. Biden as the 46th president of the United States, I’m seeing a lot of articles written about how he should focus his education agenda. This week, I came across a piece from Bloomberg Opinion that I could have written myself.

Should the Biden education team heed Bloomberg’s advice, the Untapped Potential Project could provide a model for a national rollout of a Biden agenda.

In the first paragraph, Bloomberg’s editorial board urges the Biden administration to “to get a lot better at equipping people with the skills the economy needs.” Bingo. And it only gets better from there.

“…a comprehensive workforce agenda should boost investments in career and technical education, help workers get training, and build partnerships between educational providers and employers,” the editorial suggests. One strategy would be promoting high quality public charter schools. Hard to argue with that.

Then, and even better, it calls for developing: 

“career-focused technical high schools. The U.S. needs to expand access to classes in computer science and digital literacy, and hire more teachers to fill shortages in underserved communities and STEM subjects. States will take the lead, but Washington should encourage reform and reward those that make the effort.”

The editorial correctly points out that some of this agenda would face stiff opposition from teachers unions. This is where UPP might be able to offer some lessons. While our plans have faced headwinds created by the Chicago Teachers UnIon, we have close allies among organized labor, particularly trade unions, who can help offset that political challenge — which, by the way, is very real in a state like Illinois.

The piece also suggests spending federal dollars on closing the skills gap rather than wiping out student loan debt, which, it says, “would disproportionately benefit affluent Americans and do nothing for graduates who avoided debt by working their way through college.”

Since incoming Education Secretary Miguel Cardona is a bit of an unknown quantity, we will have to wait a while to see how the administration’s education priorities shake out. But I’m a believer in being hopeful and optimistic until being given a concrete reason not to be.