By Elora Brow
Online Opinion Editor
United States President Donald Trump has nominated Betsy DeVos to serve as the federal Secretary of Education. As evidenced by her desire to eliminate public schools and increase the number of charter, private and religiously-affiliated schools, the U.S. Senate has a duty to reject DeVos’s nomination, as she poses a threat to the nation’s current educational system.
DeVos is a member of one of the nation’s wealthiest families, known for its donations to schools across the country. From 1999 to 2004, the DeVos family donated approximately $8.6 million to private Christian schools and $5.2 million to charter schools; by comparison, it donated just $59,750 to traditional public schools in the same time period, according to a chart published by the Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation.
According to The Atlantic, DeVos heads the pro-charter and pro-school-voucher nonprofit American Federation for Children. Additionally, according to The Washington Post, she has declared her support of Trump’s plan to use $20 billion of federal funds for school vouchers. According to National Public Radio, vouchers take funding from public schools in order to help people who live in areas where schools are generally underperforming.
Photos: Student opinions on Betsy Devos.
According to NPR, vouchers provide students with $2,000 to $5,000 taken from public school funding to subsidize their attendance at a private or charter school. With these funds, DeVos claims that the government would provide parents with resources that would allow them to choose the type of school–public, charter or private–that their students would attend without financial deterrents. Considering the fact that public schooling is a vital and equitable source of education for the vast majority of students across the country, it is unjust that DeVos’ plan would disadvantage the majority of students in the nation by stripping away desperately needed resources from public schools to corporate providers of education.
Although vouchers provide access to private and charter schooling for some, they certainly are not the best option to ensure that low-income students get the level of education that they would receive at public schools. According to NEA Today and Private School Review, 30 percent of students in charter schools does not graduate, and the average tuition for private schools is $10,000, only 35 percent of which is covered by the average voucher.
According to the U.S. News and World Report, DeVos has never attended a public school or been affiliated with one in any way. Furthermore, she has never run for public office. During her hearing with senators Al Franken, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren on Jan. 17, DeVos demonstrated a limited grasp of education policy fundamentals, such as the growth vs. proficiency debate and higher education financial aid. DeVos clearly displayed her limited knowledge of the nation’s educational system and does not have the breadth of personal experience needed to properly improve the entire educational system.
Huffington Post expresses their concerns on Betsy Devos.
In fact, it seems as though DeVos herself recognizes how unqualified she is for the job, as indicated by one of her family’s most recent donations. As stated by The Atlantic, the DeVos family donated about $1 million in total to over 20 senators in order to encourage them to give her their votes. Devos’ own lack of confidence in her ability to garner the approval of Congress solely based upon her merits raises a major red flag in regard to the well-being of the department and public education as a whole across the country.
According to Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan Kary Moss, DeVos’ support of school vouchers would distort the separation of church and state in regard to education. As stated by Great Schools, a leading educational nonprofit, more than half of the funds that the government dedicates to vouchers are granted to religiously-affiliated schools, demonstrating the risk that DeVos will violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution that mandates the separation of church and state.
5 things to know about Betsy Devos according to The Atlantic.
Furthermore, according to the news publication Mother Jones, the DeVos family donated a total of $100 million of its finances from 1999-2014, about half of which was given to Christian organizations. Her family’s donations clearly show that they do not have the best interests of all the American people in mind. Instead of allocating funding toward religiously-affiliated groups, the DeVos family should have put the money toward an institution that needs more improvement and caters to the majority of American students: public education.
If DeVos is officially approved for this position, then there could be drastic negative changes taking place in the current educational system. Many public schools could be dismantled and weakened, leading to people becoming less educated if they do not have access to private and charter schools.
Here is a video of Betsy Devos speaking at her confirmation hearing.
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