Education Week - December 14, 2016 - 16

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sat at the helm of the federal department first taught at a public school
or university, led a big school district,
or worked on education at the state
level-roles that generally required
them to weigh in on a range of K-12
issues.
DeVos would also be the first secretary in the department's more than
35-year history who hasn't been a
public school student or parent.
And she has made it clear that
she thinks the system could use a
shake-up.
"The education establishment is failing students, and every day more and
more parents are rising up," DeVos
said in a speech at an AFC event earlier this year. "More and more parents
are coming to realize that their children are suffering at the hands of a
system built to strangle any reform,
any innovation, or any change."
Those sentiments trouble some
educators and civil rights activists,
who worry DeVos would use her new
perch to redirect federal funds from
public schools to private and even
religious schools.
"Under the guise of expanded choice,
the DeVoses have been the agents of
a purposeful effort to dismantle the
traditional public schools and teachers' unions even if the choices that are
created don't educate kids," said John
Austin, the president of the Michigan
board of education, a Democrat who
recently lost his re-election bid. "I'm

SNAPSHOT

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pro-choice and pro-charter if it's quality and about educating kids. They're
for choice for choice's sake, as a vehicle
to try and destroy the existing public
school infrastructure."
But Theresa Weatherall Neal, the
superintendent of schools in Grand
Rapids, Mich., welcomed the pick.
She noted that DeVos and her family have helped the district pay for
a leadership coach and generally
been supportive of its transformation plan, which includes expanded
options for students, such as new
schools centered around a theme.
Michigan's embrace of expanded
choice-spurred in large part by the
DeVoses' advocacy-has made her district better, Neal said.
"On choice and competition, we have
taken a bit of a different approach
than the traditional public education lobby," Neal said in a statement.
"While we have certainly been hurt
by choice and charters, we have embraced it, and as a result, have also
become a much stronger district and
able to compete."

Voucher Warriors
Over the past two decades, the
DeVos family has given millions of
dollars to pro-voucher and pro-charter candidates, both through direct
contributions and through political
action committees, including one
associated with the American Federation for Children. The AFC was
founded in 2009 and brought to-

Carolyn Kaster/AP

School Choice Backer
Pick for Ed. Dept. Head

Betsy DeVos, nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to be U.S.
secretary of education, is a Michigan philanthropist and GOP donor who
has put money and lobbying muscle into the push for school choice.

gether both a school choice-focused
non-profit and a political organization to champion the issue. They've
also helped finance a network of
think tanks and advocacy groups
that support school choice both at the
national level and in their home state
of Michigan, such as the Great Lakes
Education Project, a bipartisan organization that promotes choice.
Dick DeVos, whose father started
Amway-a company that sells
household, personal-care, and nutrition products-even opened his own
aviation-focused charter school in
Grand Rapids.
Donations to pro-voucher and procharter lawmakers also are a big focus
of their work. Betsy DeVos herself has

donated nearly $2.7 million mostly to
conservative lawmakers over the past
20 years, according to the National
Institute on Money in State Politics.
And the AFC spent about $10.5 million in and on elections in 2014, 2015,
and 2016, according to its spokesman.
"We are winning in state after
state," DeVos said at the AFC annual policy forum, held in May outside Washington. "In the past six
years, we've doubled the number of
private-school-choice programs to 50,
the number of private-school-choice
states to 25, plus Washington, and
doubled the number of students currently benefiting from private school
choice to 400,000."
She ticked off recent school

choice victories in Indiana, Louisiana, Nevada, Montana, South
Dakota, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and
elsewhere.
The nomination likely signals that
President-elect Trump is serious
about pursuing the only K-12 policy
proposal he outlined in some detail
on the campaign trail: a $20 billion school choice program financed
through existing federal funds, possibly including the roughly $16 billion Title I program, which helps
districts cover the cost of educating
disadvantaged children.
But that promise may be a tough
one to deliver on, said Martin West,
an associate professor of education at
Harvard University, who worked as a
senior policy adviser to Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the chairman of the
Senate education committee.
West helped Alexander write leg-

K-12 Sectors

K-12 PRIVATE, INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS

THE CHOICE
LANDSCAPE
The breakdown of school-age
children and where they
are enrolled.

2013-14 TOTAL ENROLLMENT:

4.5 million
Median tuition for private day schools
that are members the National
Association of Independent Schools
was $20,000 for 6th grade.

2013-14 TOTAL
TAXPAYER SPENDING:

2,721,786

$623 billion

2014-15 Public Magnet
Schools Enrollment:

The federal
government's share:

2,609,104

#

Average Voucher Value:

$4,000-$7,000

CHARTER SCHOOLS are
independent public schools
funded with taxpayer
dollars that operate free
from many of the laws and
regulations that govern
traditional public schools.

2014-15 TOTAL
ENROLLMENT:

2014-15 Public Charter
Schools Enrollment:

1,318,198

DEFINITIONS

K-12 PUBLIC SCHOOLS

50,009,771

2016 PARTICIPATION
IN PRIVATE-SCHOOLCHOICE PROGRAMS:

8.7 percent

EDUCATION SAVINGS
ACCOUNTS set aside state
money, usually based on its
per-pupil funding formulas,
in individual accounts for
participating students.
The money can be used
for approved expenses,
including private school,
tutoring, online courses,
transportation, or even some
types of therapy.

SCHOOL VOUCHERS allow
parents to use public
funding allocated for
their child toward tuition
at a private school of
their choice, including
religiously affiliated
private schools.
TAX-CREDIT SCHOLARSHIPS
provide state tax-credits to
incentivize businesses or
individuals to donate money
to a scholarship granting
organization, which gives
money to students to use
toward private-school tuition.

SOURCES: U.S. Department of Education, EdChoice, National Association of Independent Schools

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Education Week - December 14, 2016

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