Some people complain that President Trump’s nominee for secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, would be quite unlike her predecessors.
That’s true, but it’s a good thing when you consider the status quo of American education.
We live in an increasingly complex and competitive world, but across New York City and much of the rest of the country, most public schools are failing our kids. Two-thirds of all eighth-graders in the United States can’t read or do math at grade level. Poor inner-city kids who are warehoused in failure factories with no other options, and even students in affluent suburban schools, are falling behind their peers in other countries.
Generations of children are growing up without the knowledge or training to succeed in college or the workplace.
In short, our public education system is in deep crisis. And that crisis keeps deepening. Thus, we need an outsider: someone who isn’t part of, or beholden to, the education establishment. Someone who will shake it up.
Betsy DeVos not only will do that, she has already. She has been a strong supporter of parent choice as the most effective way to improve opportunities for children trapped in decades-old failing schools. Giving parents the power to decide where to send their kids, whether parochial, charter or district, has been the major driver of true education reform in this country.
DeVos isn’t the only person to recognize the value of parent choice. Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren noted in her book “The Two-Income Trap” that “an all-voucher or all-school choice system would be a shock to the educational system, but the shake out might be just what the system needs.”
Sadly, many Democratic senators (including Warren) now say they’ll vote against DeVos’ confirmation. While no doubt they have students’ best interests at heart, it’s yet another indication that the establishment needs an outsider like DeVos.
Many political leaders, including lawmakers who oppose DeVos’ appointment, have themselves personally benefited from a non-public-school education. Indeed, six of the 10 Democrats who serve on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee either attended private or parochial schools themselves or have children or grandchildren who do so.
The reason so many elected officials who value school choice for themselves and their family members oppose it for others is politics. DeVos, by contrast, isn’t a politician and thus she’s not constrained by the orthodoxy of the educational establishment.
Rather, she is somebody who has spent tens of millions of dollars of her own money to give ordinary families the same opportunities that many of the wealthy politicians opposing her nomination have.
For too long, special interests have dominated the education policymaking system to win better contracts and greater benefits for adults — and children have paid the price.
Here in New York City, the teachers union recently lobbied policymakers to eliminate independent teacher evaluations, and two years ago convinced Mayor Bill de Blasio to reduce the time teachers spend tutoring struggling students.
Unions support a system that rewards seniority over talent or teacher effectiveness — and kids lose.
Instead of working to empower great teachers and keep talented educators in every classroom, unions have fought to preserve “rubber rooms” in order to keep persistently underperforming teachers on the city payroll, even when those teachers don’t belong in the classroom.
To end our educational crisis, we need someone who’s willing to stand up to special interests and enact bold reform. DeVos believes in delivering excellence and accountability at every level and across all forms of K-12 education — whether it be district or charter.
For the past two decades, she has worked passionately to expand access to great schools for families across the country regardless of ZIP code or background, often in the country’s poorest neighborhoods.
Future generations have much to lose — but plenty to gain — in the next four years, and they will have a strong ally fighting for them in Washington, DC, when Betsy DeVos is confirmed.
Eva Moskowitz is the founder and CEO of Success Academy Charter Schools.