Many conservatives around the country opposed the nomination of Betsy DeVos to the U. S. Secretary of Education position under President Trump. They had good reasons for that, she was a big supporter of the dumbed-down Common Core Standards. DeVos and Jeb Bush worked together for years, before her appointment to U.S. Secretary of Education, to push the dumbed-down Common Core on our public schools.
Under Governors Mike Pence and John Kasich, both implemented school choice vouchers in their respective states. Indiana and Ohio currently have school voucher programs. This played well to Republicans and Conservatives who wanted options for their children who were failing in the public schools.
Soon after these state voucher programs started, parents who had their children enrolled in private and Christian schools, noticed that children with vouchers were required to take the State Standardized Tests aligned to Common Core. That was a requirement (string) of all children using Indiana and Ohio school vouchers.
Legislators tend to want some kind of accountability measurement when doling out government funds to private or religious schools. Some are more than willing to overlook the poor proficiency scores at public schools but seem overly concerned about voucher children and what they are learning.Once a voucher is tied to the Common Core state standardized test, the government strings are then used to control the private and religious schools.
Children leave the public school for a Christian school, and use the voucher for the tuition payment. In order for the Christian school to receive funding from the state to cover that voucher, those children must take the Common Core dumbed-down standardized test. Test results are then used against the religious and private schools to get them to align their curriculum to Common Core. It’s a brilliant strategy, if you want to put the government in control of religious and private schools, but it’s also a horrible idea for those who want those schools to remain autonomous.
We saw Christian and private schools in these states begin to align their curriculum to the dumbed-down Common Core Standards. This caused many conservative supporters of school choice, begin turning on this political issue because they saw their Christian and private schools caving to government mandates.
The schools that were once offering an excellent and academic focused program, began dumbing down all of the curriculum in order to prepare the voucher students for the Common Core tests. I saw this in my own family who resides in Ohio. Because I am an education policy researcher, I heard from parents across the country who were sounding the alarm bells to oppose school choice. These were moms and researchers who were conservative, and wanted no part of the government interfering with their religious and private schools.
Governors Mike Pence, Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Bobby Jindahl, and others turned conservative and libertarian parents against school choice programs in those states. Not only did they start to control the religious and private schools, they turned the average conservative mom against school choice.
Around this time, the scholarship program was starting in New Hampshire. This school choice program allowed businesses to take an 85% credit on their tax return if they donated money to the Children’s Scholarship Fund. In turn the Scholarship organization would use that money to help families pay tuition to a religious or private school. This money could even be used if a parent wanted their child to attend a public school.
Because the money wasn’t distributed from the state budget, that made it harder for state officials to demand that these New Hampshire children take the dumbed-down Common Core tests. This allowed the religious and private schools to maintain their autonomy. Not only were we going to help those children, we were going to do it without harming our religious and private schools in New Hampshire.
Those who worked on this program, and continue to work on it today, understand the dangers of government strings attached to government money. They knew that we needed to help the child who is being bullied, find a safe environment to learn in without damaging the autonomy of the religious and private schools.
The requirement to force voucher students to take the state standardized test created libertarian and conservative parents to turn against school choice, and no one wanted that.
In New Hampshire it’s important to remain vigilant, in the future, to make sure there is no attempt for state officials to force mandates on religious and private schools.
What does Betsy DeVos have to do with all of this? During her tenure as U.S. Secretary of Education, she tried to push through a federal school choice program. This would have been a disaster for religious and private schools across the country. It would have opened that door to federal control of religious and private schools through a voucher system.
This is why conservative organizations that support school choice came out against her plan. Both CATO and Heritage publicly opposed the DeVos federal school choice program. Her plan would have ended in a faux “choice” for parents not an authentic choice they have in New Hampshire.
Betsy DeVos is now back out on a speaking tour for school choice. But it’s important to conservatives and liberty minded individuals to understand that her version will put our religious and private schools under the control of the government. That’s not school choice, that’s another overreach by government officials.
Corey DeAngelis has been championing school choice for many years. DeAngelis is the national director of research at the DeVos-founded American Federation for Children. https://betsydevos.com/about-betsy/
Devos served as Chairman of American Federation for Children (2009 to 2016). While she no longer serves this organization, DeAngelis continues to work closely with DeVos on this important issue. Does he understand that today, the Biden administration would be in control of those federal vouchers? We can safely assume that a Biden administration would happily take control of those religious and private school through a federal voucher program just like they use Title IX money to force transgender policies on our local public schools.
This is why conservatives are questioning Corey DeAngelis and his alignment with Betsy DeVos and UNESCO. While we may all share the belief that some children need alternatives to the public schools, we cannot do this at the expense of harming religious and private schools.
Betsy DeVos has a track record we can look at, and it’s not good for private and religious schools.
New Hampshire has a track record for helping children in need that does not attempt to control the private and religious schools. We can find ways to help all of the children who need it. We just need to make sure that it’s authentic school choice and not the faux version of school choice the Jeb Bush cronies want.
For more information on the School Choice Trap, please listen to this 10 minute video on YouTube.
James Lindsay on the School Choice Trap. The WOKE are setting a trap: