We Will Wait

 

 

Betsy DeVos has revealed the way politicians work. In a recent interview with Education Week, the U.S. Secretary of Education said she is not giving up on her vouchers and school choice initiatives. Prior to becoming the Secretary of Education, she has worked tirelessly in Michigan to replace public school with private school vouchers and school choice. Ten years ago, Michigan schools were in the middle of the US for student achievement measures. Over the past ten years as DeVos has donated large sums of money that has resulted in large numbers of public school students using vouchers to attend the school of their choice, including charter schools, the data does not present a good picture for the achievement levels of students in these schools. Michigan students' now perform at the bottom of the rung in achievement measures of all the states. Mmmm....

 

 During the interview with Education Week, DeVos acknowledged that lawmakers in the Legislature and Senate declined to fund her school choice proposals, both Republicans and Democrats. As she continued her remarks, she said it was important for her school choice initiative to be presented "at the right time and under the right circumstances.  I've been at this work for a really long time. I'm impatient, but I also understand the necessity for patience and for the right dynamics to be developed. So what comes to my mind is a really good motto that a family advisor has shared with us at a regular interval, which is 'hasten slowly', and I think that's a really good phrase for me to keep in mind. The reality is that most of the momentum around this, and frankly most of the funding around it comes at the state level. More and more states are adopting programs that embrace a wide range of choices. And I expect that to continue apace."

 

 Choice is a pretty benign word and could have positive connotations. Let's recall the data around school choice. It got pretty ugly in those states where DeVos and her like-minded billionaires who fund school choice activities and donated money and influenced politicians. The public schools get decimated. Segregated schools become the norm. Overall student achievement declines.

 

 DeVos and others are coming for the community schools near you. Their rhetoric will be cloaked in positive words. The time will never be right in our Maine communities for the kind of destruction she promotes. There will never be the right circumstances for her and other billionaires to drive a wedge through Maine's public schools. We will listen carefully and stand by our publically elected local school boards, our local public schools. We will elect leaders who champion public schools.

 

We also need to support our public education advocates in other states. School choice advocates wait for the 'right time and the right circumstances' to act. We all now know.