DeVos: Leaving Students Behind And Launching National School Vouchers.

On Friday afternoon, education secretary Betsy DeVos spoke as part of the coronavirus task force presentation. In eight and a half minutes, she touched on several points, including indications that she may try to use the widespread pandemic-driven shutdown to create a path to national school vouchers.

After thanking Trump for his “clear-eyed leadership,” plus a few other nods to her boss, DeVos moved on some actions the department is taking.

First, as most states are already aware, the federal government has waived the mandate for this year’s Big Standardized Test.

Next, she attempted to clarify the department’s stance on education for special needs students. This has been a point of concern for many school districts; if distance learning or other solutions cannot be made available to all students, including those with special needs, then that would be illegal. The department has said A) yes, it would be illegal and B) school districts should not let that hold them back. On Friday, DeVos emphasized both messages. She stated that the transition to online or distance learning must happen quickly and “it needs to include meaningful instruction and supports for children with disabilities.” She followed that immediately with “Learning should not stop or be denied because schools fear federal regulators.”

This misses the point. First, districts are not nearly as afraid of federal regulators as they are of lawyers and lawsuits. Second, most districts feel a strong obligation to their students with special needs. DeVos’s instruction boils down to, “Teach everybody, but if you can’t get to everybody, teach the rest anyway.” That may seem like common sense in DC; it will not seem like common sense to the families of students who are left behind.

DeVos plugged a collection of resources on the department website.

Next, she moved on to the subject of funding flexibility, saying that she will propose “microgrants” that would be “focused toward the most disadvantaged students” in communities where the school has “simply shut down.” If this language seems familiar, her next statement is even clearer:

“I’ve always believed education funding should be tied to students, not systems, and that necessity has never been more evident.”

This is voucher language. The idea of having the money follow the child is a foundational principle of the school voucher argument. The department has not offered much in the way of details for this proposal, but the basic outline—we’ll use them to rescue students in the most dire situations—is standard for launching voucher programs.

DeVos is a long-time supporter of school vouchers and choice, despite the many problems that come with vouchers, and the disastrous results of the choice policies she pushed in Michigan. Her big $5 billion Education Freedom initiative is another version of the voucher approach. For supporters of vouchers and other market-based school choice programs, the current pandemic shutdown is a great opening—their major competition, the public school system, has been swept from the market. It’s not surprising that DeVos would see the pandemic as a golden opportunity to implement a program that she characterizes not as an alternative, but as a necessity (she didn’t say it just became a necessity; she said it’s now more evident that it’s a necessity).

The secretary devotes some anecdotes and attention to another school choice slogan— that “learning can and does happen anywhere and everywhere.” That’s true, and yet few parents choose the option of letting their children drift anywhere and everywhere in hopes that some education will happen. What voucher fans mean is “we don’t need schools for anything.”

DeVos offers some unobjectionable content. An endorsement of the idea that schools are not buildings, but teachers, students and parents “working together to advance learning.” College loan relief (0% interest, payment holiday) has been set to six months.

And she wraps up with words of praise and hope—for students, for teachers, for Trump, for the fortitude of the American people. Not making her praiseworthy hopeful list? The US public school system.

Nor does she consider the larger implications of the pandemic fallout in education. The problem that she won’t really address—do schools leave some students behind, or hold in place until all students can be brought along—is just one way in which the pandemic has underlined the gaps between students and districts in this country. Systemic divides along lines of race and class, wealth and poverty, have been highlighted by the coronoviral shock to the system. There is a lot we could be learning from this forced pause about how to strengthen public education.

But instead of addressing any of those larger issues, DeVos chose to remind schools that they should not worry too much about leaving some students behind. Instead of an opportunity for learning, she apparently sees just an opportunity to push her same old policy ideas.