My Take on Betsy DeVos

I haven't written a blogpost since June 8, 2016.  Frankly, I thought I was done blogging. Over the four years since I retired from public education, I published 56 posts on this blog. It was a cathartic experience, getting a lot off my chest... and hopefully providing some insight into public education in the late 20th and early 21st century in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and the United States.

I was done... Time to move on. There was nothing else to write about without becoming a redundant, whiny old man.

Than my cousin sent me the following note:

I’m not well versed in the education circles and conversations, so I’d love to hear your take on Betsy Devos, charter schools, public schools, education vouchers, education in general. I think I heard you were blogging about education. If there is a link to that, I’d love to follow your thoughts. Or any thoughts you’d like to share would be appreciated.

Frankly, I've been asked that question numerous times by friends, relatives and even the news media in the last 4 weeks. So I thought this might be a good time to stretch out and talk about our newly appointed Secretary of Education.

---

Betsy DeVos is the new Secretary of Education of the United States of America. She was nominated by our President, Donald Trump, and was approved by the Senate in a 51-50 vote. Vice President Pence, in a historical precedent for approving cabinet appointments, cast the tie breaking vote for her to gain approval.

So what is it that Secretary DeVos is being asked to do?  

Let's get some background on the U.S. Department of Education. It may surprise you to know that the federal government is not responsible for education in the United States. Education is not mentioned or mandated in our Constitution. Thus according to the 10th Amendment, if there is to be public education, it is the responsibility of the individual states to make it happen. There are 50 separate state departments of education each creating and overseeing the education laws of their particular state. In order to execute these laws, each state delegates responsibility for education to local school districts. Education (i.e. schools) is a local activity. There are over 16,000 school districts (each with their own elected school board and Superintendent) in the United States. So unlike the rest of the world, where countries provide and manage education from a central federal authority, the U.S. has over 16,000 governing bodies overseeing education. Funding for school districts is localized as well. Each district has a unique property tax base and tax rate (i.e. millage), and a different level of financial contribution from the state and federal budgets for education. Each has different programs of instruction and guidelines for graduation. Frankly, this is what makes U.S. education so unwieldy... and hard to reform.

The federal government is involved in education only insofar as it guarantees equal protection under the law for its citizens. One of the first instances of the federal government getting involved in public education was the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling in 1954. In Brown, a group of black parents brought suit against their local school districts under the premise that receiving a separate and segregated education denied their children equal protection under the law. Their claim was that the black schools were not given equal access to resources, funds, teachers, transportation, etc. They were asking the courts to overrule the concept of "Separate but Equal" (Plessy v. Ferguson) and force integration hoping to provide equal access to quality schools. The court ruled in their favor. This ruling ordered states to cease and desist segregation in public schools. The court than ruled in a followup hearing in 1955 that eliminating segregation must be done by localities "with all deliberate speed." As an example of how unwieldy U.S. public education is it should be noted that our schools (and neighborhoods) remain segregated to this day.

The Brown v. Board of Education ruling was followed by decades of federal laws and policies attempting to guarantee equal access to a quality education for all students. Consideration of equal access was expanded from students of color, to students in poverty (Title I, 1965) and finally to students with disabilities (IDEA, 1975).

Due to the local nature of public education in the U. S., the federal government has found it difficult to provide equal access to quality education across the country. The Department of Education's strategy has been to provide supplemental funding (Title I and IDEA) for students in need. This supplemental federal funding currently represents 6% of the total education funding (federal, state, local) in the United States.

The President's budget request for FY 2017 includes $69.4 billion in discretionary funding, an increase of $1.3 billion over the 2016 appropriation. The Department's elementary and secondary programs annually serve nearly 16,900 school districts and approximately 50 million students attending more than 98,000 public schools and 28,000 private schools. Department programs also provide grant, loan, and work-study assistance to more than 13 million postsecondary students. (USDOE)

Of the funding provided for education by the federal government, the three main programs are:

• Pell Grants for lower income college students - 41% 
• ESEA: Title I (Disadvantaged Students due to Poverty) - 27% 
• IDEA: Special Education (Disabled Students) - 21%

The ESEA Title I funding supports reading specialists and classroom aides to work with students in poverty who are reading below grade level. IDEA funding supports special education teachers who work closely with students who have learning, behavioral or physical disabilities. As one can see, the federal government is rather limited in its reach into public education. And consequently, it has had a very modest effect at best on achieving its goal of quality education and equal access.

The U.S. Department of Education is a rather new cabinet level department. In 1953, Congress created a cabinet level office called the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW).  Not only did HEW concern itself with education equity, but it addressed affordable housing and the living conditions of the poor. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter recommended that Education become its own Department and Congress created it in 1981.

 "The Secretary of Education is responsible for the overall direction, supervision, and coordination of all activities of the Department and is the principal adviser to the President on Federal policies, programs and activities related to education in the United States."

Simply put, the U.S. Department of Education's responsibility, under it's newly appointed Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, is to fulfill the mission of the Department:

ED's mission is to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access. (USDOE)

Why is everyone up in arms over Betsy DeVos?

It's only been four weeks since the inauguration of Donald Trump and it is apparent that he wants to not just rock the boat, he wants to sink the boat and create a new luxury liner. The cabinet appointments that he has chosen have a consistent world view. The new cabinet nominees are quite wealthy (worth over $14 billion). 15 out of 20 cabinet members are white males. They are very conservative politically and often devout Christians. They often work in the largest corporations in America (e.g. Exxon, Goldman Sachs, Amway, Ameritrade, Blackwater.) They believe that our country is a mess and needs to be "Made Great Again". They have little respect for government in general and it's programs in particular. They have little confidence that traditional public institutions such as schools, universities, libraries, arts organizations, public television/radio are being run in an efficient manner. They believe in the free market. They believe in private enterprise. They believe competition creates accountability. They believe the only real reason to have a federal government is to equip a military to protect us from the rest of the world. 

This brings us to Betsy DeVos. Secretary DeVos is a life long member of the Calvinistic Reformed Christian church. She went to Christian schools for K12, and graduated from Calvin Christian College with a bachelor's degree in Business Administration and Politics. She married into wealth; her husband is the heir of the Amway fortune. The DeVos family are billionaires. The DeVos children were educated through home schooling and Christian private schools. The DeVos family has donated huge sums of money to Republican candidates and conservative causes. Betsy DeVos became the head of the Michigan Republican Party and her husband served on the Michigan State Board of Education.

Betsy DeVos has little or no first hand knowledge about public education. She has no academic background in education. Her frame of reference is Christian, business oriented and politically driven. It is not hard to see that she believes the answers to the education problems in this country lie in the free market. She has no problem with public dollars being used for students to attend private and parochial schools. It is telling that she wants private charter schools rather than public charter schools. Evidently she believes that the profit motive is the answer to shaking loose U.S. education inertia. She has no interest in working with public schools, in fact, she sees them as the problem not the cure. It is not a stretch to say that like her boss President Trump, she was hired as the Secretary of Education to "drain the education swamp." She wants the federal government out of public education. And she wants the free market to get deeply involved in education, especially in urban areas.

Betsy DeVos became involved politically in Detroit education advocating for school vouchers and for-profit charter schools. It is important to digress and make sure we understand what a school voucher and a for-profit charter school are about. The majority of funding for public education comes from local school property taxes. Wealthier neighborhoods have higher valued homes and generate more public revenue for their local schools. Areas of poverty have very low valued homes (more often rentals) that generate less public revenue from property taxes. Schools in poor neighborhoods have less resources, lower teacher salaries and students with multiple barriers to success. These barriers include low income, unemployment, poor nutrition, lack of access to quality schools, lack of access to basic necessities such as groceries, transportation and healthcare, family disintegration, high crime, etc. It is not surprising that when public schools are rank ordered by high stakes test scores, it is the poorest neighborhoods that are at the bottom of the list.

To address this problem, Betsy DeVos is suggested two alternatives.

• School Vouchers - In this scenario, students are given a voucher that represents the taxes that have been allocated for his/her education. So if a school district spends $11,000 for every student they teach, the district would offer an $11,000 voucher to every parent in the district. In theory, families could then spend that voucher on a private, parochial or public school of choice. 

• For-Profit Charter Schools - Charter Schools are independent public schools that are chartered by the state, the local school districts or other chartering organizations (such as a university.) Every state has different rules for its charters. In general they must comply with state public school requirements. They are offered freedom to develop their own methodologies, curriculums, culture, etc.  The vast majority (87%) of charters are non-profit organizations with school boards and staffs that are credentialed teachers. A small percentage (13%) are run by for-profit companies. Secretary DeVos believes that for-profit charters would be better able to scale up quickly and create higher student achievement.   

In essence what Secretary DeVos is considering would be to take Department of Education funding, and rather than using it to support supplemental support programs in public schools, the DOE would use the funding to provide vouchers and choice options for these students. This, she believes, would provide equal access. 

Can Secretary DeVos' plan work?

In 2013, 87% of students attended public schools in the U.S. 4% attended charter schools; thus 91% of our students went to a publicly funded school free of charge (no tuition.) Of course nothing is free. These schools are funded with tax dollars.

A small group of U.S. students attend private schools (9%). Of the students who attend private schools, close to four out of five attend private sectarian schools (Catholic, Christian, Jewish, Muslum, etc.). These schools are funded primarily through church subsidies and tuition payments by parents. Only 2% of U.S. students attend non-sectarian private schools. These private schools (academies) are the education venue for exclusive wealthy families who pay tuitions that are often as high as college tuitions. These schools are extremely selective.

Private schools, religious or otherwise, do not have to accept all students. They do not have to provide special education for students with disabilities. They can expel a student who is causing problems. If they don't offer scholarships, they don't enroll students in poverty. They are not held accountable to any of the state standards such as teacher certifications or standardized tests of accountability. They are playing by a different set of rules than public education.

Secretary DeVos wants to hand every child a voucher and let them choose a school without finances being an issue. To accomplish this she would need a legion of high performing for-profit charter schools and private schools that students could choose from. She is willing to consider public charters and magnet schools as well. It's about choice.

This begs the very important question, will a market driven education system improve the achievement of our children? 

There are a number of logistical and practical issues to consider before I will answer this question. Let's assume students in the U.S. were given a voucher to purchase an education for their children. Here are some key questions that would have to be addressed. 

Which Students - Is Secretary DeVos talking about all students, or just suburban students or urban students or black students or white students or Christian students or students living in poverty? If she really offered vouchers to everyone, could a student use the voucher to attend a neighboring district school? Could an urban student use a voucher to attend a suburban school. If so, than school district borders would eventually be compromised as students accessed schools outside of their district. 

Funding Inequities - What would be the value of a voucher? Some vouchers would be worth more than others.  Secretary DeVos would have to address the funding inequities of our current system. I doubt the public would abide their property taxes paying for students who attend schools in the next district over.  

Scaling - 87% of all students in the U.S. currently attend public schools. If Secretary DeVos were to scrap the system that educates nearly 9 out of 10 students, she would have to scale the choice schools (charter, private, parochial) up in a rapid fashion. How long would it take to create enough private, parochial and charter schools to handle such a large population? Is such a thing feasible?

Accountability - How would we hold all these choice schools accountable to a consistent and well defined set of outcomes? Secretary DeVos would say that the free market has accountability embedded in it. It does have accountability with respect to parent choice. But it would not have accountability with respect to education and academic attainment. Parents often choose schools based on safety, convenience and extra curricular activities rather than academic strength. 

Equity - How is Secretary DeVos going to deal with the issue of schools not educating special needs students, or throwing students out that are non-conforming, or schools that self-segregate by race, gender or socio-economics? Does she care about equal access?

Religion -  The 1st amendment to the Constitution states "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion". Is it constitutional to have tax dollars support private, parochial education? The Supreme Court has ruled it is not. 

Transportation - Once you engage in a school choice agenda for all students, you must have a robust transportation system to move students to their chosen school. This raises costs substantially. It is prohibitive in rural areas. And it begs the question of whether a urban black male student could choose to attend a white suburban school. Secretary DeVos, due to her wealthy perspective, hasn't considered a family that must take public transportation to get to school. 

So beyond these logistical issues, let's contemplate the original question. 

Will a market driven education system improve the achievement of our children?

NAEP Executive Summary

In 2006 the National Assessment of Educational Process (NAEP) published the results of a research study entitled Comparing Private Schools and Public Schools Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling. The comparison looked at 4th and 8th grade mathematics and reading scores on the NAEP test. Over 5000 public schools and 500 private schools were tested at each grade level. 

When the test results were compared, the private schools had superior achievement. 

However, when student and school characteristics were taken into account the results were nearly identical, even when differentiating between private parochial and private non-sectarian. 

The only difference pertained to Conservative Christian schools which lagged far behind public schools in mathematics.  

"Among the student characteristics considered were gender, race/ethnicity, disability status, and identification as an English language learner. Among the school characteristics considered were school size and location, and composition of the student body and of the teaching staff. In particular, if the student populations enrolled in the two types of schools differed systematically with respect to background characteristics related to achievement, then those differences would be confounded with straightforward comparisons between school types."

So what does this tell us. This research suggests that the tuition based private and parochial schools by definition attract a population that is wealthier, less in need of special education, less in need of ELL services and more homogenous. It suggests that class size and school size might be much smaller than in the public schools. It suggests that the public schools, particularly those in poor communities, deal with a set of circumstances that can inhibit learning and achievement. It also suggests that the Conservative Christian approach personally experienced by Secretary DeVos is the least successful sector in this study.  This begs the question of whether private schools have the necessary understanding or insight into educating populations that are diverse, from lower socio-economic circumstances and/or have learning disabilities. The answer to that question is, as a whole, they do not.

When economists, social scientists, politicians and businessmen advocate for private school education, or parochial school education or vouchers or privately run charter schools they are applying market based pragmatics to a human service field. They take education and strip it of its nuance and complexity and liken it to manufacturing widgets. The NAEP study proves that student characteristics are a prime factor in student achievement. And school characteristics, particularly pertaining to the quality of teaching staff, school culture and school leadership are relevant to discussions of achievement.  

If Secretary DeVos was an education expert, she might know about the lessons learned in Finland pertaining to teacher development and training. Or the value in a process oriented education vs. one based on basic facts and memorization. 

She might be aware of how quality public charter and private sectarian schools are designed with a deep understanding of "student and school characteristics" and that achieve extraordinary success with our poorest most needy populations in the U.S. She would also be aware that many charter and private schools do not succeed because they do not use best practices with respect to "student and school characteristics."

She would have visited Milwaukee to see an extraordinary effort to transform schools and create 20,000 quality seats of education. 

Creating quality schools is extremely hard work. Especially when you are working with at-risk rural and urban populations. It involves developing quality leadership, a high-performing faculty, a data driven methodology, a culture of caring and support, a high standard that everyone is accountable to, and a method of rewarding staff and students when they succeed.

Secretary DeVos.

The free market's mission is to generate profit. Thus when the private sector engages in education, they simplify the system, teach the basics, and measure achievement on simple minded assessments that have little to do with knowledge gained and knowledge applied. And they pay little or no attention to the needs of their student body.

I'm all for giving parent's choice. But if your choice is limited to schools that aren't performing, you have offered nothing. Quality schools are created through use of best practices and developing a common culture of success. Choice doesn't do this. A deep understanding of school culture, curriculum, instruction, assessment and student/teacher support does this. And a passionate, informed education leader does this.

With all due respect, your choice agenda will not work. You want to make America Great Again. Here's the bad news. From an education perspective, America was never great. Education in the United States has always centered on the best students in the best neighborhoods. Prior to the late 1800's school was not mandatory. Prior to the end of WWII, high school was not mandatory. Up to 1980, we did not attempt to teach all students beyond basic reading, writing and arithmetic. In Pittsburgh, prior to 1980, if you had a 5th grade reading level, could do some basic arithmetic and had a strong back, you could work in the steel mill and make a middle class life. Those days are gone.

Now we need to educate everyone, and at a much higher level. 21st century education is a complex, multi-dimensional undertaking.  This is particularly true in the United States due to our economic, ethnic and racial diversity. It is made even more difficult by our lack of central educational planning and balkanized local school structure. If you look at the countries who lead the world in education - South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Finland - they all have a centralized system, with high standards for achievement, teacher quality and accountability.  These countries see education as a national imperative. The United States sees education as a commodity.

Thinking that a free-market approach to education will "Make America Great Again" in education is extremely short sighted. It's as if we believe a free-market approach allowed the McDonalds Corporation to find a way to create great nutrition. It didn't. It succeeded at creating huge profits and huge Americans.