This January, Betsy DeVos was confirmed to be the Secretary of Education of the United States. DeVos is a proponent for accountability and the privatization of the school system. She believes that parents should be able to choose what school their student attends and plans to institute this with the voucher system.
As students, DeVos and her actions could have a large impact on our future, so we should care about how well she does her new job. Unfortunately, there are concerns.
The problem is DeVos has very little experience with the public school system. DeVos attended private high school and college. In Michigan, she helped move funding from public schools to private ones. To help her overcome her unimpressive educational resume, she should ask lots of questions to make sure she truly understands her role. She needs to become familiar with the system before making any important changes. If not, the results could be bad.
One problem with DeVos’s plan is the proposed privatization of schools. This would allow middleman corporations to make money off running schools. The problem with this change is it takes money from the public school system and gives it to private schools using the voucher system. This leaves unprivileged schools vulnerable because public schools are already underfunded in many parts of the country. Again, DeVos needs to learn the pros and cons before implementing any changes.
So, is this really the person we want leading the public school system? It can’t be changed now, but as students we should definitely be cautious of DeVos’s actions. Students need to speak out against the public school system being defunded for the voucher system. If this happened, would students then use the voucher system for private school or stay in a defunded school? Students, and even parents, need to stand up to DeVos’s ideas until she figures out a way to correctly implement her ideas without damaging public schools in the process.