After billionaire Betsy DeVos assumed office as secretary of education Feb. 7, many parents jumped on social media threatening to pull their children out of public school.
These angry moms and dads say they would rather homeschool their children than send them through a DeVos-run system.
With a little bit of luck, DeVos will mismanage the bureaucratic Department of Education so badly that it shrinks. Currently we have a DOE that is too large, too standardized and far too expensive.
Before anyone jumps on me for wanting to decrease public education funding, I want to state that I am a product of public school. I attend one currently. In fact, I ventured into private school for two years of high school and detested it.
However, my personal experiences aside, we face an education system that is spending more and more on children each year without seeing any rise in test scores or overall aptitude.
In 1984, federal spending per student was $165. In 2014, it was $816. During this same time frame, National Assessment of Educational Progress tests for 17-year-olds showed lackluster results.
Math scores increased by a measly eight points on the 500-point NAEP test scale, and reading scores dropped by two points.
Yes, you read that correctly. We got worse at reading while spending 117 percent more per student adjusted for inflation.
Enter DeVos, a woman who attended private schools her entire life. She seems entirely out of touch with the needs of public school systems, opting instead to expand voucher programs to private schools – sometimes for-profit private schools. She’s even in favor of the common core, a controversial, nationwide set of academic expectations for high school students.
We don’t need a blanket curriculum set by the federal government that tells all schools in America the bare minimum their students can regurgitate on a test to get by. Standards should be set at the state level, and states should find the best way to make an education system they can be proud of.
DeVos and other common core supporters are simply setting a bar for how mediocre students across the entire country can be.
We already have a track record of inefficiency with the DOE, and now its leader is trying to minimize the efficacy of our existing public system. Americans’ hate for DeVos will shed light on the $40.8 billion public education system’s drain on resources.
Americans need to realize that throwing more money and more federal rules at the public school system won’t make it better. It hasn’t worked in the past, and I don’t know why federal bureaucrats insist that cash and regulation are the saviors of bad schools.
I’m overjoyed that Betsy DeVos is our new secretary of education. People hate her, she has no educational experience and she never once attended public school. She can only serve to expose the system for what it already is – an overgrown waste of time and money.
dylmoore@umail.iu.edu
