“I know You’re Not a Doctor, but Take Out My Appendix Anyway”
Not a lawyer: be on the Supreme Court. Not a doctor: operate on a hot appendix. Not a plumber: run a plumbing company. If that makes sense, then it makes sense for Betsy DeVos to be Secretary of Education.
Betsy DeVos has no experience in public education. She went to private Christian schools through elementary and high school and to a private Christian college, Calvin, where she earned a bachelors degree in Business Economics. Her children were home schooled.
Betsy (Prince) DeVos is an heir to a car parts company fortune. She married Dick DeVos, an heir to the Amway corporation fortune. Her brother was a founder of Blackwater, the private security company. She has worked for the Republican party throughout her life. She was party chairman for Michigan, raising millions for Republican candidates, and her family has reportedly donated over $17 million to Republican candidates and committees.
What were her credentials for Education Secretary? DeVos headed up the non-profit “American Federation for Children.” The goal of this organization is to break down education funding into voucher/scholarship programs which would allow individual parents to spend public funds on public, private, charter or home schools. She is committed to this vision of moving money for public education into the private sector.
And, she raised a lot of money for Republicans. And, she has spoken of dissolving the Department of Education. And she fits into Senior Presidential Advisor Steve Bannon’s overall plan of “deconstruction of the state.”
If the Department of Education represents the federal public education, then Betsy DeVos represents the anti-public education world. Much like the appointment of Scott Pruitt as the Director of the Environmental Protection Agency, her choice signals that the Trump Administration looks to “deconstruct” public education.
So what’s wrong with the idea of vouchers: of packing all the government money for a student into a per student package, then handing the package over to the parents to spend their education money where they wish?
1. Private schools do not have the oversight for student learning that public schools do. Students and teachers in private schools are not required to meet the educational standards that public schools have. In the “charter school revolution” of the past several years, many private schools have failed their students because there was no oversight.
2. Private schools can pick and choose students. Students who don’t measure up: in performance, behavior, ability, or following the school’s faith based views – are dumped out. That also means the more expensive students, those with special education needs or physical disabilities, are weeded out of the private school setting.
3. Private education can teach whatever the school decides to teach. While every parent has the “right” to have a religious based education for their child, should every other parent be required to pay for that with public monies?
4. Private education is a profit making monster. Companies running private schools would love to have more access to public funds.
5. With a systematic voucher system, the students left in the public system would be the most expensive or difficult to educate. Of course the claim would be that private education is more efficient, because they wouldn’t have to educate the most expensive students.
What does the Department of Education do? They distribute federal funds, often linked to programs to help certain groups of students like those with physical or learning disabilities or from low income families. The Department of Education uses funding to enforce laws providing equal opportunity to education, gender equality, and preventing discrimination. Going to a voucher style system, with federal monies passed out in blocks to states to be divided into vouchers, defeats this entire process. It sets up a system designed to discriminate.
This is what Betsy DeVos stands for. This is what the world of Steve Bannon and Donald Trump believes in. This is why Betsy DeVos was the exact wrong choice for the Education Department.
