Betsy DeVos and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad....Public Education System?

I accidentally wrote this blog first because I mixed up the assignments in my calendar, but I tried to update it bit. Most students in this class are on the school social work track so for my current event, I chose to discuss Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. She is a billionaire business woman and philanthropist who has never attended public school herself and none of her children have attended public schools. As a school choice advocate, she explains that she wants to allow parents to have a say over their child’s education. She wants to promote alternative and charter schools. That’s cool and I don’t even necessarily disagree with that. I’m not totally anti-charter school. I’m anti-Turning-The-American-Education-System-Into-Another-Capitalistic-Financial-Venture.

The issue lies in the fact that charter schools are not held at the same federal standards as their public counterparts. Charter schools can be owned by almost anyone.

ALMOST ANYONE, GUYS.

This is why some charter schools are fantastic in providing a powerful, prolific educational experience that show students flying past the national averages while at the same time other charter schools are giant, resource sucking sinkholes that don’t even end up providing anywhere near appropriate levels of education. But regardless, some random person still turned a profit on funds that could have been put toward a student in a public school or even worse, they turned that profit on another family’s dime.

DeVos herself has said, "if a school is troubled, or unsafe, or not a good fit for a child ... we should support a parent's right to enroll their child in a high-quality alternative" (Fox News). I agreed with you there, Bets. High quality. But how will she define high quality? How will she maintain that standard if she’s leaving them up to the states? As the secretary of education, her role is to determine those standards, not to pull a Huckleberry Finn and pass it along for someone else to do the hard work. 

I am interning in a public school district that has enough funds to provide an alternative educational experience for students who need more support and those programs are inside the public schools. I agree with DeVos that one size fits all education doesn’t work. I see how individualized education works every day in public schools. I also see how already more funding is needed for resources like classroom aides, programing, resource rooms, educational materials (that teachers don’t have to buy for their own classrooms) and trainings of all kinds.

Parents should absolutely have a choice in their children’s education. Investing in and expanding federal laws like IDEA to work within the public school system can do this. But turning the education system into a cooperation that is left unaccounted for with disorganized and unequal management is not the answer.  

As social workers, how can we work to combat potentially harmful plans for the education system?

I’ve attached several links because I used multiple sources. Trevor Noah’s video brings some light to a pretty bleak scenario.

http://www.cc.com/full-episodes/p4hqb1/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah-january-18--2017---samantha-power-season-22-ep-22049

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-we-learned-and-didnt-about-betsy-devos-at-her-confirmation-hearing/

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/17/politics/betsy-devos-public-education-experience-cnntv/