Betsy DeVos is hardly a household name, but the Michigan billionaire and conservative activist has quietly helped change the education landscape in many states, spending millions of dollars in a successful push to expand voucher programs that give families taxpayer dollars to pay for private and religious schools.
Now DeVos is poised to spread her preference for vouchers nationwide. President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday named her as his nominee for education secretary, a pick that suggests he aims to follow through with campaign promises to expand the movement toward “school choice” — including vouchers and charter schools — in an effort to break up a public education system that he has called “a government-run monopoly.”
Trump’s pick has intensified what already was a polarized debate about school choice. Advocates for such choice see in the Trump administration an extraordinary opportunity to advance their cause on a national scale, whereas teachers unions and many Democrats fear an unprecedented and catastrophic attack on public schools, which they see as one of the nation’s bedrock civic institutions.
Jim DeMint, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, cheered DeVos on Wednesday, saying that “the school choice movement will have a champion in the Education Department.” American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said that Trump’s pick “makes it loud and clear that his education policy will focus on privatizing, defunding and destroying public education in America.”
Many Republicans on Capitol Hill are hoping that DeVos will shrink the Education Department’s role in public schools and leave more decisions to states and districts.
“Betsy DeVos is an excellent choice,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, adding that he expects DeVos to stop the Obama administration’s effort to turn the federal government into a “national school board.” Alexander led a recent bipartisan effort to pass the Every Student Succeeds Act, which shifted power to the states.
Three decades ago, there were no state voucher programs. Now, according to the advocacy group EdChoice, about 400,000 children in 29 states are going to private schools with the help of public dollars.
DeVos is working toward a scenario in which “all parents, regardless of their Zip code, have had the opportunity to choose the best educational setting for their children,” she told Philanthropy magazine in 2013.
Trump has proposed redirecting $20 billion in federal spending toward a grant program for states to expand vouchers and charter schools. He has also said that he wants to use the bully pulpit of the presidency to persuade states to devote another $110 billion toward vouchers — enough, he has said, for every child living in poverty to have a scholarship of $12,000 toward the school of his or her choice.
Research on voucher programs shows mixed results.
Several recent studies have found that voucher recipients’ math and reading test scores decline after they transfer from public to private schools. But other studies have found that voucher recipients are more likely to enroll in and complete college.
Public school advocates fear that redirecting dollars from public to private schools not only weakens public education but also gives taxpayer support to institutions that don’t have the same obligation to serve all students — including those in need or who have learning disabilities.
Vouchers also send money to religious schools, a fact that has provoked political resistance and legal challenges. “Americans are always free to send their children to private schools and religious schools, but raiding the public treasury to subsidize private businesses and religious organizations runs against the public trust and the Constitution,” said Rabbi Jack Moline, president of Interfaith Alliance, adding that Trump’s nomination “suggests he has little regard for . . . the constitutional principle of separation of church and state.”
“We cannot rest as a nation until every kid gets a chance to attend a great school,” Rep. Luke Messer (R-Ind.), chairman of the Congressional School Choice Caucus, said in a statement hailing DeVos’s nomination.
(www.washingtonpost.com)
