It shouldn’t have come as much of a
surprise that a president with no political experience saw no issue with
appointing an Education Secretary who has absolutely no experience with public
education. Despite that lack of
experience, and after a bitter battle in the confirmation hearings this week,
Betsy DeVos was confirmed as the head of our educational system in the United
States.
I have a great many concerns about
this, as her appointment will directly affect my students and me. Never mind that her confirmation came after
she and her family made great contributions to many of the senators who voted
on her behalf, which means she essentially funded her own nomination. Never mind that in the hearings, she was
unable to respond to the simplest of education policy questions, such as the
distinction between growth and proficiency.
Never mind her stance against Common Core—a whole issue in its own
right, worthy of deeper discussion in a later post. Never mind that she has never ‘walked a
mile’, let alone a step, in the shoes
of hard-working educators all over the country.
There are a lot of issues, but one
of the biggest ones is her staunch advocacy of School Choice. School Choice sounds great, and in theory,
it’s meant to level the playing field.
It’s meant to make underperforming schools ‘step up to the plate’ and to
allow underprivileged students access to better schools than those in their own
backyard, often in the form of charter or voucher schools. Parents ought to have a say in where their
kids go to school, and should be able to send their kids to the best schools,
even if that’s not the one in their neighborhood. In theory—a great idea. In reality, not so much. School Choice, and what that looks like on
paper, doesn’t play out in reality. From a position of privilege, perhaps
that’s difficult to see, but then again if the one has never walked a mile in
those shoes, the inherent design flaws are not immediately evident.
Students can still be denied access
to private or voucher schools, so “School Choice” can translate into options
for those who have additional monies, and those who are academically advanced
and therefore desirable to selective schools who want to boost their academic
ratings, but that does not mean that those schools have to accept students who
might lower their school’s test scores—it’s bad for publicity, which is often
what drives high performing and moneyed students there to begin with. Of course, those students already have those
choices now. School Choice, here,
doesn’t so easily open new doors to those who don’t fit into those
categories—the ones School Choice is supposed to lift up and bolster. The economics of School Choice factor in
another way as well. If every student
has $12,000 federal dollars which can follow them to the school of their
choice, and the private schools charge in excess of that, only those with
additional money can foot the bill—just as is the case now. Factor in additional transportation charges
on top of that, to travel to schools outside the neighborhood schools, plus
books, supplies, and uniforms, and you have yet again an equation that closes
School Choice to the ones who could most benefit from it. Those students will be left in the local
neighborhood schools, now bereft of the federal dollars which could improve and
sustain the improvement to the free public education to which all students
should be entitled. If those schools are
to be improved so that access to a good education is, in fact, available to all
of our children, pulling federal funding out of those schools cripples their
ability to make those improvements, effectively widening the divide instead of
leveling the playing field.
One of the most troubling issues is
that funding following the students means that federal tax dollars will pay for
religious schools, since according to the Department of Education, some
76% of private schools have some religious affiliation. This is a basic violation of the separation
of Church and State. Parents should
certainly be able to teach their kids their own religious and spiritual
foundation, but taxpayer dollars should not be required to fund those choices.
Setting aside even that fundamental argument, there is the issue of
oversight within private schools, which are not beholden to the same degree of
transparency as public schools. Private schools, religious and otherwise, do
not have to follow the same standards of professional credentialing or
curriculum, and are not held to the same testing standards as public
schools. This makes it difficult to even
tell if sending our tax dollars to those private/voucher schools is an
economically sound move that accomplishes the intended outcome of raising our
students’ academic performance nationally.
I know a great many private school teachers, and many of them are
hard-working, dedicated, intelligent individuals. There are certainly high-performing private
schools—of that there is no doubt. I don’t
want this to devolve into an us-vs.-them argument, because I believe that there
are great things going on in some of the private and charter schools. What I do expect, however, is the kind of
accountability with our tax dollars for ALL schools that won’t happen if Betsy
DeVos’ track record at the state level bears out at the national level.
On Betsy DeVos’ own website, she says “I am committed to
transforming our education system into the best in the world. However, out of
respect for the United States Senate, it is most appropriate for me to defer
expounding on specifics until they begin their confirmation process.” She’s been confirmed now, and so far I have
yet to hear the specifics, other than devaluing the work of public educators
and expounding on the dubious benefits of School Choice. If she is, in fact committed to transforming
our education system, I want to see transformation that takes into account some
of the real issues facing the students that walk through the public education
system daily. I want assurance that the
perceived ‘fix’ for our schools isn’t the Pied Piper waltzing out of our public
schools and trailing along with her promises of fattened coffers without
oversight for only those who have the ability to catch the train and follow.
Instead, meet with teachers. Meet with students where they are. Use those funds to build up public schools
and bring them up to speed with the needs we face in today’s society—all schools,
not just select ones. Invest in building
business partnerships within communities, to bridge theoretical education with
practical application. Invest in the
kinds of technologies that kids need in order to thrive and succeed in today’s
society. Invest in technical and
vocational training that help our kids understand complex tasks of the work
force of today. Invest in mentorships
that promote engagement in education.
Invest in the creative and critical thinking that encourages our
students to begin thinking about and solving social issues today, and even
those issues that haven’t surfaced yet. Invest in an arts education that allows our students to find a voice for their passions, an expression of their souls. Invest
in a humanities education that recognizes our students are not numbers, not
inanimate products of a business, but humans who struggle with poverty,
depression, teen suicide, violence, financial uncertainty, abuse, language
barriers, disabilities, discrimination, and yes, even the real possibility for
some of our students of deportation for them or their family members. Take all that money out of the public schools
and send it to private schools, and those problems still exist, and in even
heavier concentrations in those neighborhood schools. Don’t send our students off scrambling in
search of a promise of a better education; give them a better education where
they are.
A high-functioning, prosperous
democracy depends on an educated populace.
It would benefit all of us to make sure all of our children have a strong education. I hope Betsy DeVos goes to school—our public
schools—to learn what good teachers are doing day after day, because it’s going
to take a real education in order for her to positively effect change for all
the children of our nation. I hope she’s
ready for it.
Some resources and additional reading:
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