Part 4 of 4

When President Trump nominated Michigan’s Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education, it was widely assumed that the American school choice movement was about to ride a new wave of momentum.

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When it comes to school choice, DeVos clearly favors “all of the above.” She and her former organization, the American Federation for Children, have supported an aggressive expansion of public charter schools, virtual online schools, private school voucher programs, education savings accounts and other innovative approaches.

It’s a safe bet that DeVos and President Trump will at least express support for state policies – and perhaps provide funding for programs — that significantly broaden the spectrum of choice for American families.

“On the campaign trail, Trump vowed to use federal funds to encourage states to make school choice available to all poor students, including through vouchers that allow families to take public funding to private schools,” reported Chalkbeat.org.

School choice advocates are hoping that Trump’s election, coupled with Republican control of the majority of statehouses throughout the nation, will pave the way for expanded school choice.

Robert Pondiscio, senior fellow and vice president for external affairs at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, wrote that political conditions are favorable at the moment, “at least in the two-thirds of states where the Republican Party control is uncontested, for charters, education savings accounts, tax credits, vouchers, and the full range of parent-empowering options for education and school finance.

“Perhaps we should take full advantage of it,” he wrote. “It won’t stay open forever.” 

But some wonder if school choice can make any serious progress when the education reform movement seems to be splintered.

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Many left-leaning reformers, particularly within the dominant charter school sector, are fundamentally opposed to the type of broad choice that the President and DeVos favor.

The progressives only trust parents to make school choices when they are limited to a list of highly regulated, pre-approved options. And they don’t like non-charter school choice at all.

“I would say that education choice is a double-edged sword,” Steve Evangelista, co-founder of Harlem Link, a charter elementary school in New York, told Chalkbeat. “We as the charter school sector and the education community need to understand the damage that choice can cause.”

Democratic education reformer Justin Cohen, writing in Chalkbeat, openly challenged the DeVos approach to school reform, which is focused more on parents’ ability to choose the right schools for their children, and less on government regulation of charter and other choice schools.

“The nomination of DeVos signals that our country’s Republican leadership will abandon the technocratic agenda in favor of an ideological one,” Cohen wrote.

“DeVos’ own history indicates that her department of education will prioritize federal funding for private religious schools, a laissez-faire approach to school accountability, and a hands-off approach to the enforcement of federal civil rights laws.

“…DeVos’s nomination should be a wake-up call to the left-leaners of the reform coalition …”

Broad choice vs. limited choice

Progressive reformers have tied their efforts almost exclusively to public charter schools, a sector they have come to dominate.

Led by the influential National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA), they have taken a cautious approach toward the growth of the charter sector itself, focusing on regulation over expansion, and replication over innovation.

They say their efforts – which include policies to quickly close lower-performing charter schools – are designed to ensure quality within the sector.

Critics say their efforts, while well-intentioned, have slowed the growth of the charter school sector, zapped the innovative spirit from the charter movement, and narrowed parental choice.

DeVos, on the other hand, seems to favor the aggressive expansion of charter schools, including online virtual schools, which provide educational lifelines to many at-risk students who almost certainly would have otherwise fallen through the cracks.

“Secretary of Education nominee Betsy DeVos has a long history of backing virtual schools, including founding and funding groups that have supported the expansion of online education,” The74million.org reported.

Greg Richmond, president and CEO of NACSA, does not share DeVos’ enthusiasm for online education, at least in its current state, due to reports of bad student performance on standardized state tests.

“Most are performing terribly, yet they continue to operate year after year, delivering, not a better education to students, but a worse education at great taxpayer expense,” Richmond was quoted as saying during a 2016 charter school meeting in Philadelphia.

“Pennsylvania has more than 34,000 students in virtual charter schools and these children deserve a better education than they are getting.”

Greg Richmond

Richmond calls for more government regulation of online schools, and little patience for those that don’t quickly tow the academic line.

“To provide students with better options in the future, authorizers need to close virtual charter schools that are persistently failing,” Richmond wrote in a piece published by Education Next. “And state legislatures need to pass new legislation that establishes unique ground rules for virtual schools.”

That’s a pretty strong indication that NACSA, along with a good portion of the mainstream charter school sector, might oppose federal support for expansion of virtual education.

DeVos is also an enthusiastic supporter of publicly funded private school voucher programs, which have popped up in numerous cities and states in recent years, since the courts have given them the green light.

The programs offer students, including many low-income children, an education avenue that was previously beyond their financial means.

“In 2000, (DeVos) helped get a ballot measure before Michigan voters that would have enshrined a right to vouchers in the state’s Constitution,” ChalkBeat reported. “After the measure failed, she and her husband formed a political action committee to support pro-voucher candidates nationally.”

But many of the people who dominate the charter school sector are openly hostile to voucher programs.

“I’ve worked in charter schools nationally for two decades, and the vast majority of people I know who work in and support charters are deeply troubled by vouchers,” Steven F. Wilson, a senior fellow at Education Sector, wrote in a blog post.

Jed Wallace, president and CEO of the California Charter Schools Association, wants his state to completely reject the notion of voucher programs.

“We’re not in support of parent choice for the sake of parent choice,” Wallace said. “There have to be other pieces in place. Those other pieces include ensuring accountability for academic outcomes, ensuring admissions practices requiring that schools serve all students, and ensuring that schools are responsibly and transparently managed. 

“We know these essential pieces can be achieved within a charter school context. For vouchers, it is not at all clear that these elements would be a part of the mix. This is why we believe in California we should be focusing entirely on charter schools and not on vouchers.”

They don’t like DeVos, or Republicans in general

Many mainstream charter school officials point with disdain to DeVos’ significant influence in Michigan, which has hundreds of charter schools that have been operating in a limited regulatory environment.

They say the lack of regulation has led to the existence of too many “low-performing” charter schools. They tend to judge charter schools almost exclusively on student test scores, rather than parental satisfaction.

Scott Pearson, president of the D.C. Public Charter School Board, told the Washington Post that “Michigan is in many ways a poster child for what can happen when you have too many authorizers that don’t have good oversight.”

The Massachusetts Charter Public School Association recently sent a letter to U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, expressing the same sentiment.

“We are concerned about media reports of Ms. DeVos’ support for school vouchers and her critical role in creating a charter system in her home state of Michigan that has been widely criticized for lax oversight and poor academic performance, and appears to be dominated by for-profit interests.”

One fundamental problem DeVos may encounter is the acidic relationship between Republicans and Democrats, which was festering well before the presidential election, and has worsened exponentially in the months since then.

DeVos is the former chair of the Michigan Republican Party. Many officials from the charter school sector are Democrats who despise President Trump, and would be highly unlikely to support any education initiative that originates in his White House.

Many of these so-called education reformers supported Hillary Clinton, despite her close political ties with the anti-reform and anti-choice crowd, most notably the nation’s teacher unions.

Richmond, the NACSA president, tweeted the following in reaction to Trump’s victory:

“Not much of a mandate. Trump got fewer votes than Mitt Romney, John McCain … or Hillary Clinton.”

He also tweeted that “the Ku Klux Klan says it will hold a Trump victory rally in North Carolina.”

Richmond even referred to the president as “manna from hell.”

It’s hard to picture Richmond in the Rose Garden, standing next to the President and DeVos, endorsing a united approach to a broad, uninhibited school choice effort.