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Trump’s education pick is an attack on public schools

DeVos stands to undermine our nation’s education system

Last Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump picked Betsy DeVos as his nominee for education secretary, further intensifying what was already a polarized debate about education policy. DeVos, a strong proponent of ‘school choice’ — especially in the form of vouchers — will enact policies that could harm our public education system. Many University students attended Virginia’s highly rated public schools, and we would hate to see them suffer under the coming administration.

While charter schools and vouchers — which give parents the ability to choose the school that their children attend — might seem like reasonable propositions, their implementation has failed to produce consistently positive results. Charter schools and vouchers are band-aid solutions that, though they can provide some students with better educations, lead state legislatures to neglect public schools and their students, who are desperately in need of more resources.

Twenty-three years ago, Michigan attempted to fix its deteriorating public education system through the expansion of charter schools. The effort, of which DeVos was a major sponsor, left Detroit in an educational vacuum for nearly a quarter of a century. Half the charter schools performed as well or worse than the existing public schools in a city where only 10 percent of rising high school seniors scored “college ready” on reading tests, according to The New York Times.

DeVos’ selection is a sign that Trump intends to pursue his campaign promise to enact extensive school choice through a federal investment of $20 billion — a dangerous move toward a disproven and inefficient policy. Since it’s unlikely DeVos will undergo an ideological transformation before her appointment, the Virginia state legislature should continue to pour resources into our already exemplary public schools, with an eye toward offering equal resources to all our students.

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