U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas, who is in a fierce race for the Senate, has hit his opponent, Republican Sen.Ted Cruz, for wanting to take money away from public schools, and for being the “deciding vote” in favor of U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ confirmation.
“At a time when nearly half of the school teachers in Texas are working a second job just to make ends meet, Ted Cruz wants to take our public tax dollars out of their classrooms, turn them into vouchers,” O’Rourke says in a new campaign ad. “He was the deciding vote in putting Betsy DeVos in charge of our children’s public education. I want to pay teachers a living wage. I want to allow them to teach to the child, and not to the test. And when they retire, I want it to be a retirement of dignity. Those public educators have been there for us. Now it’s time to be there for them.”
It’s true that Cruz has been a big proponent of private school vouchers. And he was the author of a provision in the new tax law that allows families to use 529 college-savings plans for K-12 private schools.
Earlier this year, the island’s government approved a plan to create “alianza” schools, which are intended to be like charter schools, as well as a “free school” selection program similar to vouchers. The legislation creating both, signed by Puerto Rico’s governor and backed by Secretary of Education Julia Keleher, would create restraints on both programs: In the first year of the voucher-like program, for example, the number of students would be capped at 3 percent of total student enrollment, and then at 5 percent in the second year. Keleher said the programs would help the island’s educational system better meet students’ needs and help transform a long-struggling system.
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos wants teachers and school leaders to move past the blackboards-and-desks model of schooling, with an eye towards better serving individual kids.
In DeVos’ view, schools have looked pretty much the same over the past five decades or so.
“For far too many kids, this year’s first day back to school looks and feels a lot like last year’s first day back to school. And the year before that. And the generation before that. And the generation before that! That means your parent’s parent’s parents!” she told students at Woods Learning Center in Casper, Wyo., according to prepared remarks. “Most students are starting a new school year that is all too familiar. … They follow the same schedule, the same routine–just waiting to be saved by the bell.”
That’s not helping keep kids engaged, she added: “It’s a mundane malaise that dampens dreams, dims horizons, and denies futures.”
The speech kicked off a six-state tour to highlight what it means to “rethink” education, during which DeVos gave shout-outs to former President Ronald Reagan, Albert Einstein, and Steve Jobs. But she didn’t offer a ton of new specifics about how her department would help with that reinvention, beyond shining a spotlight on schools that she thinks are on the right track. And one of the more than thirty protestors outside urged her to “Rethink Vouchers” according to the Casper Star Tribune.
In her speech, without naming names, DeVos continued to do rhetorical battle with people who she says want to keep K-12 schools stuck in the past.
“Today, there is a whole industry of naysayers who loudly defend something they like to call the education ‘system.'” she said. “What’s an education ‘system’? There is no such thing! Are you a system? No, you’re individual students, parents and teachers.”
She said some schools have been able to move past the old model.
Woods Learning Center in Wyoming’s Natrona County, where DeVos kicked off her tour, is a “teacher-powered” school, with no principal. Its students don’t get traditional letter grades. And kids can enroll in Woods through the district’s open enrollment policy.
“Students, your parents know you best, and they are in the best position to select the best learning environment for you,” DeVos told the children.
She also likes that Woods emphasizes “personalized instruction” for each student.
“Your personalized learning program rethinks school because it is structured around you. Each of your learning plans is developed for each of you, recognizing that each of you is different, and that you learn at your own pace and in your own way,” DeVos said. “Your success here at Woods is determined by what each of you are learning and mastering. Not by how long you sit at your desks. That is awesome, by the way.”
‘Start Rethinking Schools’
DeVos didn’t delve into details though, about just how her department might help schools begin to rethink instruction, other than, of course, by highlighting what she sees as good examples through the back-to-school tour.
President Donald Trump’s budget proposal would cut two programs that schools might use to remake instruction. It seeks to zero out the main federal program for teacher training and get rid of a new block grant created under the Every Student Succeeds Act that districts can use for technology, which can enable personalized learning programs. But so far, the Trump-DeVos school choice proposals have fallen flat in Congress.
After her speech, DeVos took questions from kids. Unsurprisingly, none of them mentioned the proposed budget cuts, but one student asked how she planned to “rethink schools.”
DeVos said this will ultimately be up to educators, not Washington.
“I’m going to challenge teaching and leaders in school to start rethinking schools, because I don’t have all the answers,” she said. “And the people I work with in Washington don’t have all the answers. But I’ll bet lots of teachers in lots of schools around our country have the answers.”
This week, DeVos will be visiting private, public, and charter schools in Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska. Her next stop in Wyoming is St. Stephen’s Indian High School on the Wind River Reservation.
How wide is the disconnect between the public and the current administration on what should and shouldn’t be done to strengthen our schools? According to the 2017 Phi Delta Kappa International (PDK) Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools, the gap is significant. A majority of Americans opposes using taxpayer funds to pay for private school tuition and supports a reduced role for standardized tests. An overwhelming percentage also want local school districts to provide “wraparound services” and favors increased funding to pay for them.
“These and other results suggest that some of the most prominent ideas that dominate current policy debates – from supporting vouchers to emphasizing high-stakes tests – are out of step with parents’ main concern: They want their children prepared for life and career after they complete high school,” said Joshua P. Starr, the chief executive officer of PDK International.
Where does a potential national expansion of private school vouchers fit in? Vouchers have never been a popular idea with the American public who have long recognized the danger of siphoning off money for public schools to pay for private school tuition. According to the PDK survey, by a margin of 52% to 39%, Americans oppose this idea, consistent with results from previous year’s polls.
Given the current spotlight on vouchers, PDK dug a little deeper on the issue this year, asking respondents if they supported using public funds to pay for religious private school tuition. Presented with this detail, opposition to vouchers surged to 61%.
According to the 2017 PDK survey, a majority of Americans oppose using public funds to pay for private schools. If the question is expanded to include religious schools as an option, opposition rises to 61 percent.
In addition, when told that a voucher system either could help public schools by making them compete or hurt them by reducing their funding, support for only funding public schools increases to 67%, compared to 26% support for vouchers – a 41-point gap.
Support for standardized testing as a measure of student success continues to decline. According to the poll, 42% see student performance on standardized tests as “highly important,” scoring significantly lower than art and music classes, extracurriculars, advanced academics, career-focused technology and engineering classes, and interpersonal skills. Only 6 % rated standardized tests as the “most important” factor in determining school quality.
The lack of confidence in standardized tests can be attributed to the public’s growing unease over the narrow path our schools have been forced to follow over the past 15 years. By overwhelming margins, Americans want schools to educate students more than just academically. Eighty-two percent of respondents support job or career skills classes – even if it means some students might spend less time on academics. The public believes it is highly important for schools to help students develop interpersonal skills, such as being cooperative, respectful of others, and problem-solving.
Large majorities also said schools should offer certificate or licensing programs that qualify students for employment upon graduation. Furthermore, 82% see technology and engineering classes as “extremely or very important” measures of school quality.
“Taken as a whole, the American public is saying it thinks public education has tilted too far in pushing or emphasizing academics to the detriment of vocational or career skills classes,” Starr added. “They support the academic mission but they also want local schools to position students for their working lives after school.”
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The PDK poll also reveals high level levels of support for “wraparound services,” such as health and after-school programs – a central tenet of the community school model that is taking root across the nation. Ninety-two percent favor after-school programs, and 87% support providing mental health services to students who can’t get this help outside of school.
Starr says it’s clear from the results that the public wants balance. “Americans want a course correction.”
Here are some additional highlights from the 2017 PDK International poll:
49% of Americans give their local public schools an A or B grade. Among public school parents, the approval increases to 62%.
70% of parents say they’d prefer to have their child in a racially diverse school, including equal numbers of whites and nonwhites. But the PDK survey notes that this may “reflect a socially desirable answer,” instead of a commitment to act or support policies that might decrease segregation. For example, very few parents say they would accept a longer commute for their children to attend a more diverse school.
61% of public school parents expect their child to attend college full time, while 22% expect a mix of part-time study and part-time work. Seven percent expect their child to seek a full-time job after high school.
Written by Mashea Ashton for the Arizona Informant
It’s fair to say the ultimate goal of the education reform movement, and the education community in general, is to ensure that all students – no matter where they live or what their background is – have access to a high-quality education. This is a big and intimidating challenge, an addressing it requires across-the-board commitment to three foundational goals.
First, we have to ensure that low-income families have access to high-quality educational opportunities at local private schools. Too often, those at the lower end of the income spectrum are limited to sub-par or failing public schools simply by virtue of what neighborhood they live in. This is an unacceptable outcome for those of us committed to educational equality, and that’s why we should focus time and resources on ensuring that workable solutions like vouchers and tax credits are an option for our nation’s most disadvantaged students.
Mashea Ashton
Second, we have to be committed to providing access to high-quality public charter schools. As public schools operated independently of their district, charter schools are in a unique position to lead in educational innovation, setting an example for both private and traditional district schools.
But too often they lack the funding and access to facilities that other public schools enjoy. All students deserve equal access to educational funding, facilities, and opportunities in areas where charter schools are available, and we have to work even harder to make sure charter schools are available as an option in those places that don’t currently provide educational opportunity.
Third, we have to work to improve the quality of the traditional public schools we already have. There’s a temptation for education reformers to focus on progress we can make outside district school systems. In many ways it’s easier to enact change through private and public charter schools than it is in district schools. But committing to high-quality education for all students means making sure that every school is providing the best possible education to its students.
It’s easy to embrace an “us versus them” mentality, especially between reformers and the establishment, but even among reformers. Each sector of the reform movement has its own priorities, and when we focus only on our goals we risk losing sight of our purpose. Ultimately, we’ll only realize our shared vision if we learn to work together, both as reformers with different priorities and in collaboration with the establishment.
That’s what we’re trying to do in Newark, New Jersey, where parents, educators, administrators, students, clergy, community leaders and other local stakeholders are coming together for educational opportunity. Despite significant budgetary and community challenges, we have been able to establish significant changes in the educational landscape. Nearly one-third of Newark’s public school students are now served in charter schools, and the entire community is talking about ways to continue expanding access to high-quality options.
I’ve said before, and it bears repeating, that we have to take a kids-first approach to the issue. If charter, private, and district schools can all acknowledge that we have the same universal goal, if we can acknowledge together that our children are more important than politics, ego, or legacy, we can increase access to high-quality options across the board.
Mashea Ashton serves on the board of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, and is the CEO of the Newark Charter School Fund.
Last week, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos delivered a much-anticipated speech about her plan to shift massive amounts of valuable taxpayer money away from public schools to pay for private school vouchers. That’s not exactly how she framed her ideas as she addressed the American Federation for Children (a pro-school privatization group chaired by DeVos until she was tapped to be Education Secretary). Instead, DeVos said the plan—details still to come—would amount to the “most ambitious expansion of school choice in our nation’s history.”
Voucher devotees like DeVos know this, which is why the term “school voucher” has been ditched in favor of less offensive, appealing terms.
Take for example this line from DeVos’ speech to the AFC. Praising Indiana’s large-scale voucher program, she promised to “empower states and give leaders like Eric Holcomb the flexibility and opportunity to enhance choices Indiana provides its students.”
In that one sentence alone, DeVos offers up four favorite euphemisms used to rebrand voucher legislation: “empower,” “flexibility,” “opportunity” and, of course, “choice.”
The Trump-DeVos budget would slash the federal investment in public education programs by a whopping 13.6 percent, while providing $1.4 billion in new spending on school voucher expansion. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
The intent is to obscure the fact that these spruced up proposals still produce the same result: less taxpayer money for public schools, more taxpayer money for unaccountable private schools that can, and do, discriminate.
The Trump budget request for fiscal year 2018 unveiled on May 23rd makes it clear that DeVos intends to deliver on this threat. NEA President Lily Eskelsen García calls the outlined education budget a “wrecking ball” to public education in service of a school privatization agenda.
“DeVos and Trump have made failed private school vouchers a cornerstone of their budget,” said Eskelsen García. “Vouchers do not work and they take scarce funding away from public schools—where 90 percent of America’s students enroll—and give it to private schools that are unaccountable to the public.”
As the details to DeVos’ plan become clearer in the coming weeks, expect to hear more about “opportunity,” “flexibility,” “tax credits,” “savings accounts,” “scholarships”—everything except “private school vouchers.” Here are a few programs touted by DeVos that, despite being smoothed out around the edges, are still at their core schemes to funnel taxpayer dollars from public schools to fund private and for-profit schools.
‘Tax Credit Scholarships’
These programs, which could be a centerpiece of the administration’s plan, currently exist in 17 states with more potentially ready to follow suit.
A tax credit scholarship incentivizes individual taxpayers or corporations to donate money to non-profit organizations that bundle the funds and disburse them (less their cut for administrative expenses) as private school vouchers. Donors are able to claim the donations as credits against their state tax liability and often can also claim those same donations as deductions to reduce their federal tax bill.
“Rather than include line-items in state budgets for spending on school vouchers, lawmakers ask taxpayers to undertake such spending on the state’s behalf, in return for a generous tax giveaway,” Davis recently wrote in The American Prospect.
Far from philanthropy, the individuals who make these donations can often get more in return than they gave by also claiming a federal charitable tax exemption—what Davis calls “double-dipping.”
Davis and others label these programs “neo-vouchers” because they still, through a more circuitous route, transfer taxpayer money to private schools.
‘Education Savings Accounts’
Another “back-door voucher” is an Education Savings Account (ESA). With ESAs, a portion of a state’s per-pupil education funding is put into an account that parents can tap into to pay for approved education expenses. This includes private school tuition and fees, textbooks, test prep services and tutoring, as well as a variety of other services, with no oversight over student outcomes.
In March, Arizona eliminated eligibility requirements from its existing ESA program. Initially aimed at students with disabilities and dubbed “Empowerment Scholarship Accounts,” the program is now open to virtually all students, and, as caps ease, could include as many as 30,000 public school students by 2020. The program allows parents to take 90 percent of the money that would have gone to their school district and spend it as they see fit. The program, says Arizona State Senator Steve Farley, is nothing more than an “ESA voucher debit-cards-for-all scheme.”
‘Opportunity Scholarships’
The Washington, D.C., Opportunity Scholarship Program is the first and only federally funded school voucher program in the country. Created by Congress in 2004, the program provides vouchers to 1,100 low-income D.C. students, some of whom were already attending private school. Secretary DeVos would like to expand the program, ignoring a recent study that found that participants who used vouchers scored lower than their public school peers in both reading and math.
Lawmakers in North Carolina appropriated the term “opportunity scholarship” when they enacted a voucher program in 2013. The program was funded at $17.6 million in 2015-16, and up to $24.8 million in 2016-17. Meanwhile, public school funding in North Carolina has been slashed. In 2016, the state spent more than $12 million on these “scholarships,” which are expected to serve 32,000 students by 2026, at a cost of $134 million annually.
Tell Betsy DeVos: Your Voucher Plans Harm Students
Betsy DeVos’ goal as Secretary of Education is to slash funding for public schools, using voucher schemes to funnel taxpayer dollars to unaccountable private schools.A well-resourced public school in every neighborhood is our best bet for setting every student up for success. Email DeVos today. Tell her to focus on investing in public schools.
While there are no data to support the claim that voucher programs increase the opportunities for low-income children to attend higher-performing schools, there is considerable evidence that voucher programs increase the “opportunity” for more affluent families to receive public subsidies for private education. In Indiana, home to the largest voucher program in the nation, more than half of the state’s voucher recipients have never attended public schools, so Indiana taxpayers are subsidizing private school education for many students whose families could already afford it.
This slow but steady expansion of voucher programs is being duplicated elsewhere. It’s become a familiar story: voucher bills are rebranded and targeted towards specific populations—low-income students or students with special needs, for example—to make them more politically palatable. Once the legislation is implemented, eligibility requirements are soon eased, and funding is increased. Meanwhile, funding for public schools is further eroded.
“For too long, these schemes have experimented with our children’s education without any evidence of real, lasting positive results,” says Eskelsen García. “Improving public schools requires more money, not less, and public money should only be used to help public schools.”
East Stroudsburg Area School District and its taxpayers paid cyber charter schools $3.7 million last year. That total has climbed consistently for at least the last five years.
The Pennsylvania school code requires that all state funding follow a student regardless of his or her choice of school. Funds are allocated directly to public school districts. Then, charter schools seek a tuition reimbursement from the district that sends the student.
Public schools are obligated to pay, but institutions have clashed on how much. Calculations are currently based on the expenses of the sending school. They do not consider what it actually costs the charter school to educate a student.
“In my opinion, it’s destructive to the public education system,” said Principal Bill Vitulli of Smithfield Elementary School. “Is it reasonable to pay cyber charter schools who don’t have nearly the same costs we do?”
Vitulli also manages the district’s own cyber program, East Stroudsburg Area Cyber Academy. It currently has about 90 students enrolled full-time and closer to 60 attending part-time, he said. All classes are taught by district instructors.
“Cyber charter schools don’t really have any different expenses than we do in our program,” he said. “They might have to hire more staff, but they don’t have all the costs of building maintenance, sports teams or after-school activities.”
Vitulli estimated an annual cost of $2,500 to educate a single, nonspecial student in the district cyber program. He did not have an exact figure available, he said.
Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey Bader said cyber academy costs are included in district’s other expenses; however, he estimated the program costs less than $4,000 a year per student.
Right now, the district pays charter schools $12,735 for each student or $29,731 for each special education student.
In October 2015, East Stroudsburg school district had 202 students enrolled in nine different cyber charter schools, according to Pennsylvania Department of Education records. That total includes 51 special needs students, who have higher tuition costs.
Commonwealth Charter Academy had the largest population of East Stroudsburg area students that year. CCA had 84 district students enrolled as of October, including 21 special education students. It remains one of the most attended by students from Monroe and Pike Counties for the last five years.
“Our costs aren’t the same; they’re just different,” said CEO Maurice Flurie, who formerly worked as assistant superintendent for Lower Dauphin School District.
“The general expectation is that it’s less, but that’s not necessarily true,” he said. “Some things cost exponentially more, like equipment maintenance or technology infrastructure.”
It costs CCA a little over $11,000 a year to educate a nonspecial student, Flurie said. CCA currently has more than 9,000 students enrolled across the state.
“We have costs no school district has,” he said. “When traditional schools have Keystone Exams or PSSA tests, kids ride the same buses to school — there’s no added costs. We have to put teachers on the road, rent spaces and feed staff. It costs us $800,000 to $1 million a year just to administer tests.”
Testing performance is one of the indicators used by the state Department of Education to measure educational effectiveness. Those numbers comprise a weighted score, called a School Performance Profile.
Online education programs generally have lower SPP scores than brick-and-mortar schools. Cyber charter schools scored an average of 50.9 between all 14 institutions operating in Pennsylvania.
CCA scored 47.5 during the last school year.
“We care about our kids making progress over time,” said Flurie. “In most cases, students come to us because something wasn’t working at their other school. That’s not appropriately reflected in an SPP score.”
About 72 percent of CCA students are at least one grade level behind at enrollment, Flurie also said. While about 80 percent return the next year, about 20 percent seek another institution.
“It doesn’t take into account the amount of kids leaving and coming in,” he said. “Some students plan on being with us just for middle school, so they’re going to test better as a ninth grader at a new school.”
East Stroudsburg had a district-wide SPP score of 69.6, based on the average results of its ten individual schools. Its cyber program does not have a separate score. Those students’ performances are reflected in the results of the physical school they would have attended.
“The general consensus is that cyber school isn’t necessarily the best way to teach,” said Principal Vitulli of East Stroudsburg’s program. “Success in cyber learning — even in our district — is not as good as being in a brick-and-mortar school.”
The program has grown substantially since he took over three years ago, Vitulli also said. He estimated the program on its own could likely rate well above the 50.9 average SPP cyber school score.
“It’s hard data to get,” he said. “You can’t compare because cyber schools are not being held to the same standards as brick-and-mortar schools.”
WASHINGTON — Education Secretary Betsy DeVos refused to say Wednesday whether she would block private schools that discriminate against LGBT students from receiving federal dollars, explaining that she believes states should have the flexibility to design voucher programs and that parents should be able to choose schools that best fit their children’s needs.
DeVos returned frequently to the theme of what she called a need for more local control in her first appearance before Congress since her rocky confirmation hearing in January.
Fielding questions from members of a House Appropriations subcommittee, she said that states should decide how to address chronic absenteeism, mental health issues and suicide risks among students and that states should also decide whether children taking vouchers are protected by federal special-education law.
Researchers have found that many states allow religious schools that receive taxpayer-funded vouchers to deny admission to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students or children with LGBT parents.
Asked by Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Mass., whether she could think of any circumstance in which the federal government should step in to stop federal dollars from going to private schools that discriminate against certain groups of students, DeVos did not directly answer.
“We have to do something different than continuing a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach,” DeVos said.
Democrats immediately criticized DeVos’ philosophy, saying the nation’s top education official must be willing to defend children against discrimination by institutions that get federal money. “To take the federal government’s responsibility out of that is just appalling and sad,” said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif.
DeVos pushed back against the notion that the Education Department would be abdicating its authority. “I am not in any way suggesting that students should not be protected,” she said.
DeVos traveled to Capitol Hill to defend a spending plan that has drawn criticism from both ends of the political spectrum.
President Donald Trump has proposed slashing $10.6 billion from federal education initiatives, including after-school programs, teacher training, and career and technical education, and reinvesting $1.4 billion of the savings into promoting his top education priority: school choice, including $250 million for vouchers to help students attend private and religious schools.
The administration is also seeking far-reaching changes to student aid programs, including the elimination of subsidized loans and public service loan forgiveness and a halving of the federal work-study program that helps college students earn money to support themselves while in school.
In her opening remarks Wednesday, DeVos said that while the size of the proposed cuts to K-12 and student financial programs “may sound alarming for some,” the president’s budget proposal reflects a push to return more decision-making power to states and more educational choice to parents.
“We cannot allow any parent to feel as if their child is trapped in a school that is not meeting their needs,” DeVos said.
Democrats predictably attacked the administration’s budget proposal as an effort to undermine public schools and low-income students’ ability to attend college.
“This budget reflects the views of an administration filled with people who frankly never had to worry about how they were going to pay for their children going to college,” said Rep. Nita Lowey, N.Y., the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. “And yet I’m most upset that this budget would undermine our public education system and the working families who depend on them.”
Several Republicans praised DeVos, particularly for her push to expand school choice.
“I’ve always made known my preference for giving parents the choice of where to send their students, because in the end the parents are the taxpayers. The parents are the ones who probably know best,” said Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md.
But GOP members also displayed their share of skepticism about the administration’s proposed cuts.
Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., chairman of the education subcommittee, questioned the proposal to dramatically cut college financial aid programs such as work-study and college-access programs for low-income students. “Frankly, I will advise you,” Cole said, “I have a different point of view.”
Another key Republican, Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, N.J., chairman of the Appropriations Committee, emphasized that it is members of Congress and not the president who hold the power of the purse and will ultimately design the federal budget.
Declaring “awe” for special-education teachers’ hard work, Frelinghuysen also questioned whether the administration had proposed adequate funding for students with disabilities. DeVos seemed open to devoting more money, calling it a “matter for robust conversation.”
A 1975 federal special-education law promised that Congress would pay 40 percent of the cost of providing additional services to students with disabilities. Lawmakers have never come close and in 2017 are footing only about 15 percent of the cost. The Trump administration is proposing to hold funding at that level.
Critics said they are hopeful that Congress will reject many of Trump’s ideas, as lawmakers did this month when they reached a bipartisan deal to fund the government through September.
But even in that scenario, Trump’s proposal creates damaging uncertainty for school districts and students seeking to pay for college, said John King, who served as President Barack Obama’s education secretary and now helms the nonprofit group Education Trust.
“The administration has framed the conversation as a conversation about cuts rather than a conversation about investment,” King said. “We should be talking about investing more.”
While the administration’s proposed cuts have been embraced by fiscal conservatives who argue that Education Department programs need to be trimmed or eliminated, some conservatives are also troubled by the administration’s proposal to invest new money in school choice, saying that represents an unwelcome expansion of the federal footprint in education.
“As much as I want to see every single child in America have school choice, it is just not appropriate for the federal government to be using new dollars and new programs to push states in that direction,” said Lindsey Burke, an education policy expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “You need local buy-in for these school-choice options to really be supported and viable in the long run.”
Trump and DeVos are seeking to increase the federal investment in charter schools by 50 percent, bringing the total appropriation to $500 million per year. They also want to establish a new $250 million fund to expand and study private-school vouchers, and they want to dole out $1 billion in grants to school districts to adopt policies that allow tax dollars to follow students to the public school of their choice.
In a speech Monday night, DeVos called the push for school choice “right” and “just” and an opportunity to “drag American education out of the Stone Age and into the future.” She referred to her critics as “flat-earthers” and said that while the federal government would never force states to adopt choice-friendly policies, those who opt out are making a “terrible mistake.”
By Emma Brown, Danielle Douglas-Gabriel Copyright 2017, The Washington Post
Funding for college work-study programs would be cut in half, public-service loan forgiveness would end and hundreds of millions of dollars that public schools could use for mental health, advanced coursework and other services would vanish under a Trump administration plan to cut $10.6 billion from federal education initiatives, according to budget documents obtained by The Washington Post.
The administration would channel part of the savings into its top priority: school choice. It seeks to spend about $400 million to expand charter schools and vouchers for private and religious schools, and another $1 billion to push public schools to adopt choice-friendly policies.
President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have repeatedly said they want to shrink the federal role in education and give parents more opportunity to choose their children’s schools.
The documents – described by an Education Department employee as a near-final version of the budget expected to be released next week – offer the clearest picture yet of how the administration intends to accomplish that goal.
Though Trump and DeVos are proponents of local control, their proposal to use federal dollars to entice districts to adopt school-choice policies is reminiscent of the way the Obama administration offered federal money to states that agreed to adopt its preferred education policies through a program called Race to the Top.
The proposed cuts in longstanding programs – and the simultaneous new investment in alternatives to traditional public schools – are a sign of the Trump administration’s belief that federal efforts to improve education have failed. DeVos, who has previously derided government, is now leading an agency she views as an impediment to progress.
“It’s time for us to break out of the confines of the federal government’s arcane approach to education,” DeVos said this month in Salt Lake City. “Washington has been in the driver’s seat for over 50 years with very little to show for its efforts.”
The proposed budget would also reshape financial aid programs that help 12 million students pay for college.
A White House official said Wednesday (May 17) it would be premature to comment on any aspect of “ever-changing, internal discussion” about the president’s budget prior to its publication. “The president and his Cabinet are working collaboratively to create a leaner, more efficient government that does more with less of taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars,” the official said.
The Education Department had no immediate comment.
The budget proposal calls for a net $9.2 billion cut to the department, or 13.6 percent of the spending level Congress approved last month. It is likely to meet resistance on Capitol Hill because of strong constituencies seeking to protect current funding, ideological opposition to vouchers and fierce criticism of DeVos, a longtime Republican donor who became a household name during a bruising Senate confirmation battle.
Asked for comment, a spokesman for Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., chairman of the Senate education committee, referred to Alexander’s response in March to the release of Trump’s budget outline. That statement emphasized that while the president may suggest a budget, “under the Constitution, Congress passes appropriations bills.”
The Senate education committee is meeting Tuesday to vote on President Donald Trump’s nominee for education secretary, Betsy DeVos, a billionaire school choice advocate, best known for her work chairing the American Federation for Children.
A broad contingent of civil rights organizations, educators, and advocates have come out against DeVos’ nomination.There’s a huge social media campaign to defeat her, and in-person protests across the country. At the same time, she has the support of Republican policymakers, like former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, and even some Democrats and former Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut.
After a bumpy confirmation hearing, committee Democrats asked DeVos about 800 questions to flesh out her views on key K-12 issues. The top Democrat on the committee, Sen. Patty Murray, of Washington, asked DeVos some 140 questions, and made the answers public. (You can read them here.)…
U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas, who is in a fierce race for the Senate, has hit his opponent, Republican Sen.Ted Cruz, for wanting to take money away from public schools, and for being the “deciding vote” in favor of U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ confirmation.
Puerto Rico’s Supreme Court has 
How wide is the disconnect between the public and the current administration on what should and shouldn’t be done to strengthen our schools? According to the 2017 Phi Delta Kappa International (PDK) 
It’s fair to say the ultimate goal of the education reform movement, and the education community in general, is to ensure that all students – no matter where they live or what their background is – have access to a high-quality education. This is a big and intimidating challenge, an addressing it requires across-the-board commitment to three foundational goals.
Another “back-door voucher” is an Education Savings Account (ESA). With ESAs, a portion of a state’s per-pupil education funding is put into an account that parents can tap into to pay for approved education expenses. This includes private school tuition and fees, textbooks, test prep services and tutoring, as well as a variety of other services, with no oversight over student outcomes.
The Senate education committee is meeting Tuesday to vote on President Donald Trump’s nominee for education secretary, Betsy DeVos, a billionaire school choice advocate, best known for her work chairing the American Federation for Children.