Hear ye Hear ye. Will Trump’s proclamation embolden the Coalition to destroy public education?

President Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, has not delighted the education community, particularly those in her home state where many say that her push for school choice and a free market for charter schools has not worked for Michigan kids.

DeVos and her husband are major political power brokers. The couple contributed $50,000 dollars to the campaigns of senators whose votes she needed to be approved as a nominee and, since 2015, members of the DeVos family have given more than $2.6 million dollars in contributions to the Michigan Republican party and other candidates and political organizations in the state alone.

In 1994, the DeVos family was instrumental in passing legislation that attached funding to the student instead of the school district.

The idea that money follows the student began to fail when the student population started to decline, but the number of schools kept rising. Now schools – public and charter – are in bidding wars to attract kids and the money they bring, leading to campaigns to attract students with iPads, bicycles, and gift cards, often times in poor neighbourhoods around the holidays.

In 2010 Ms Devos opened up her own charter school on the grounds of the Gerald R. Ford Airport in Grand Rapids which kids from 40 different districts attend.

In 2011, the DeVos’ education advocacy group – the Great Lakes Education Project – successfully lobbied for legislation that removed the cap on the number of charter schools and the organisations that could operate them.

Detroit is the lowest performing big city in the country, but over the last 15 years, the entire state of Michigan has declined when it comes to student performance. And many say the push to deregulate charter schools – who can open them, close them, and where they can be placed – has played a major role in that downward turn.

“When I hear her name and I think about education, I think about choice without quality,” said Tonya Allen, president and CEO of the Skillman Foundation, and a member of a coalition to help fix Detroit schools.

“Nearly half of charter schools here are ranked in the bottom of American schools, according to the Education Trust Midwest. Twenty percent were given a “D” or “F” grade. And 80 per cent of charter schools in the state are now operating as for-profit institutions.

“We focused on the proliferation of choice and creating as many charters as we could as quickly as we could, rather than focusing on whether the schools that we were going to open were going to be high quality,” Allen said.

“In Michigan DeVos is viewed as the architect of the Detroit system for better or worse and obviously I and many others believe it’s for worse,” said Aaron Pallas, professor of sociology and education at Columbia University’s Teachers College, “I think it’s very much a market mechanism argument.”

According to billionaire DeVos, “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.” That “alternative” could mean allowing states to use federal money to provide vouchers to families who want to enroll their children in public charter schools or private schools.

And it seems, despite the poor results of her experiment so far, DeVos has prevailed. Trump has issued “A Proclamation”.

NATIONAL SCHOOL CHOICE WEEK, 2017

– – – – – – –

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

The foundation of a good life begins with a great education. Today, too many of our children are stuck in schools that do not provide this opportunity.

Because the education of our young people is so important, the parents of every student in America should have a right to a meaningful choice about where their child goes to school.

By expanding school choice and providing more educational opportunities for every American family, we can help make sure that every child has an equal shot at achieving the American Dream. More choices for our students will make our schools better for everybody.

With a renewed commitment to expanding school choice for our children, we can truly make a great education possible for every child in America.

As our country celebrates National School Choice Week, I encourage parents to evaluate the educational opportunities available for their children. I also encourage State lawmakers and Federal lawmakers to expand school choice for millions of additional students.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 22 through January 28, 2017, as National School Choice Week.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-fifth day of January, in the year of our Lord two thousand seventeen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-first.

DONALD J. TRUMP

It would be timely to point out that, in his maiden speech to parliament, our Education Minister Simon Birmingham expressed similar views.

“It is time that at least one state, in at least one region, trialled the implementation of school vouchers – affording all families the opportunity of choice, the opportunity to allocate the government funding for their child to pay the fees to the school of their choice.”

He also showed an interest in performance-based pay for teachers as a way to boost student results.

In a 2012 opinion piece, Senator Birmingham said, “Parents should be free to choose the education that best suits their child, with government funding appropriate to the students’ needs moving with that student, regardless of the type of school they attend”.

He also expressed support for US-style charter schools

Is this another area where we will follow the failed model of the US and abandon public education in favour of big profits for political donors who want to make a motza from deregulated private colleges?