Trump ' s Billionaire Education Secretary Has Been Trying to Gut Public Schools for Years
Meet Betsy DeVos , the anti-union , pro-voucher surprise nominee .
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The unchecked growth of charters has created a glut of schools competing for some of the nation ' s poorest students , enticing them to enroll with cash bonuses , laptops , raffle tickets for iPads and bicycles . Leaders of charter and traditional schools alike say they are being cannibalized , fighting so hard over students and the limited public dollars that follow them that no one thrives . Michigan leapt at the promise of charter schools 23 years ago , betting big that choice and competition would improve public schools . It got competition , and chaos . Perhaps even more than her push for charter schools , Betsy DeVos is known as a fierce advocate for the expansion of vouchers . Until about 2000 , using public funding to pay for private and religious schools was a fringe idea , but the DeVos family worked diligently to push it to the center of the Republican Party . Today , 13 states have active voucher programs , in addition to the District of Columbia . DeVos serves on the board of the American Federation for Children , a national group that has pushed for school vouchers even as their record for improving student achievement is mixed , at best . As Douglas Harris , an economist at Tulane University and director of the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans , wrote in a New York Times op-ed , " Students who participated in [ Louisiana ' s ] voucher program had declines in achievement tests scores of eight to 16 percentile points . In Ohio , the results were also negative ( though less so )." If Trump ' s voucher agenda moves forward , it is also possible that the federal government could send some Title 1 funding , a $ 15 billion program that exclusively funds low-income public schools , to high-income private and religious schools . If that becomes policy , DeVos — a billionaire who never sent her children to public schools — could oversee the erosion of one of the most important federal school programs created to serve America ' s most vulnerable kids .
President-elect Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos in Bedminster , New Jersey , on November 19 Andy Katz / AP
Disclaimer : The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of The New Heights Education Group .
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