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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