Elon Musk got a lot of attention for a clueless tweet about New Jersey teachers (Allison Robbert | Pool via AP)AP
The man who recently appointed himself “first buddy” to Donald Trump just mocked the state of New Jersey for allowing teachers into the classroom who can’t read.
Or so he claimed. Elon Musk told his more than 200 million followers on X last week that due to a new law signed by Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, reading teachers “don’t need to know how to read in New Jersey.” It triggered a social media furor and breathless coverage on Fox News: “This is truly the blind leading the blind!” pundit Tomi Lahren declared.
Please. Musk and the rest of the conservative rage bait chamber are, unsurprisingly, dead wrong on this. The legislation Murphy signed last year was bipartisan and merely a tweaking of the long trail of preparation for teachers, not putting people who can’t read in front of kids. That’s just insulting.
And the Tesla billionaire’s juvenile tweet – further amplified by millionaire MAGA activist Charlie Kirk, who wrote on X: “Imagine being illiterate and thinking to yourself, “You know what, I think I’ll go into teaching” – is symptomatic of the arrogance so typical of this gang of plutocrats.
Musk was an early investor in electric cars and now considers himself an expert on everything, much like Trump. Facts be damned.
For the record: To teach in New Jersey’s public schools, you must graduate college with at least a 3.0 grade point average, show competence as a student teacher for months, and either pass a general knowledge test or, for the upper grades, pass what could be multiple tests in any subject that you want to teach.
In other words, to instruct others on a subject like biology, you must be qualified in that subject. Now if only we had a rule like that for billionaires.
Musk’s tweet and its many promoters falsely suggested that the only way to find out if teachers can read and write in New Jersey is if they pass a particular skills test that our state just eliminated – when in fact, we did away with that test because many educators found it “duplicative,” as a Republican lawmaker and charter school official, Dawn Fantasia, immediately pointed out to Musk on X.
And furthermore: Starting later this year, New Jersey will require prospective elementary school teachers to have three times the number of college credits in literacy instruction than they previously could get by with, and more in math as well. The bar is rising, not falling.
But no matter. Since Musk launched his clueless tweet on Sunday, it’s been viewed more than 18 million times, reshared more than 23,000 times and liked more than 98,000 times as of Friday afternoon, by an army of people now spreading this nonsense that New Jersey teachers are illiterate.
Sure, we can always do better. We can find better ways to draw the best people into the profession. We could improve teacher prep courses and teacher training. We could work to weed out the worst teachers who don’t belong in the classroom.
But New Jersey’s schools overall rank among the best in the nation for their reading scores, and Musk doesn’t seem to know that. And how, exactly, is falsely claiming that teachers “don’t know how to read” going to help these kids?
It’s insulting the profession at a time when our districts are struggling to recruit and retain teachers in crucial subjects like special education, foreign languages, English as a second language, science and math. In Newark, for example, reading specialists are being reassigned from their critical roles to fill vacancies in other classrooms, even as we race against the clock to recover from devastating pandemic learning loss.
So rather than dismissing teachers as ignoramuses, why not advocate for something that might actually help – like eliminating an absurd residency rule in New Jersey, which blocks needy schools in places like Newark and Camden from recruiting the best candidates if they happen to live across the border in New York or Pennsylvania? Senate Majority leader Teresa Ruiz has long been trying to suspend that rule temporarily for teachers, yet her bill remains stalled in the Legislature. What sense does that make?
And in the meantime, if Elon Musk really wants to improve American education, he might start by whispering in Trump’s ear: Perhaps a pro-wrestling manager is not the best choice as his secretary of education.
Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.
Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.
If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.
Use of and/or registration on any portion of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement, (updated 8/1/2024) and acknowledgement of our Privacy Policy, and Your Privacy Choices and Rights (updated 1/1/2025).
© 2025 Advance Local Media LLC. All rights reserved (About Us).
The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Advance Local.
Community Rules apply to all content you upload or otherwise submit to this site.
YouTube's privacy policy is available here and YouTube's terms of service is available here.Ad Choices
