WASHINGTON, DC – MAY 19: U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos listens during a cabinet meeting … [+]
After three years of insisting that she would not use her department to impose federal will on state prerogatives in education, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos seems to have given up that dream in the face of pandemic-fueled opportunities.
When Congress would not implement the Obama administration’s favored education policies, Arne Duncan earned the ire of conservatives by circumventing the legislative branch and using the leverage of federal dollars to twist states’ arms to accept everything from Common Core to teacher assessment based on student test scores.
DeVos followed in Duncan’s footsteps last month by announcing that states could compete for funding, implementing policies she favors, such as school vouchers. Now she has gone one step further by redirecting to private schools pandemic relief money that was intended to serve public school students. Even Sen. Lamar Alexander, top GOP member of the senate education committee and himself a former secretary of education, has said that he thinks she’s getting it wrong.
What, exactly, is the fuss about? Erica Green at the New York Tims has provided excellent coverage of the whole dustup, but here’s the simplified explanation for folks who are not students of education policy.
The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES) includes a big chunk of money to help relieve financial pressure on schools. Different parts of that chunk are sliced up in different ways, but one chunk was meant to aid low-income students. The method that legislators typically use when they want money to specifically aid low-income students is to put it under Title I, a portion of the federal education law (currently known as the Every Student Succeeds Act) that directs money specifically to address educational issues associated with poverty.
The expectation was that private/religious schools would receive a chunk of the aid based on how many Title I students they have. Instead, education department guidance (the “what we think this law means” directive issued by the department) instructs states to funnel money to those schools based on total enrollment.
So, for example, let’s say that East Egg Academy is a private school that enrolls 200 students. Of those, 150 come from wealthy families (50 of whom live in another state) and 50 meet the Title I guidelines. Under the Congressional interpretation of the law that they wrote, EEA would receive aid based on 50 students; Betsy DeVos believes the aid should be based on 200 students.
The form of the aid is another set of details. Often, Title I aid results in extra services, and so the law might mean that if the public system hires after-school tutors for their Title I students, they must supply tutoring for the private school.
But the bottom line here is that DeVos’s reading calls for public school Title I students to get less assistance so that all private school students get more. That’s what the fuss is about.
DeVos is not being particularly coy about her intentions. In an interview with Cardinal Timothy Dolan, she was quite direct in saying that she intends to get more money directed to religious and private schools, and that she sees the pandemic as an opportunity to do so.
Supporters of the DeVos view have argued that some of the private and religious schools serve some students from low-income families. But that’s beside the point—no one is arguing that the private and religious schools should be ignored entirely, and the law is clear that they should receive relief funds for the Title I students they serve. The question is whether or not the law should perform a reverse Robin Hood to serve even the most wealthy and privileged private school students.
