Day -56: Public Schools Are Now Big Business
Horace Mann was the father of the public school system in America. His vision provided access to all children, regardless of socio-economic class. One historian said of Mann:
“No one did more than he to establish in the minds of the American people the conception that education should be universal, non-sectarian, free, and that its aims should be social efficiency, civic virtue, and character, rather than mere learning or the advancement of sectarian ends.”
Donald Trump’s vision for America is shaped by his vision and life: one of privilege. Spawn of a multi-millionaire, Trump was shipped to boarding school with other well-to-do children. His understanding of the world, like most people, has been shaped by his experiences.
He has no clue how the advantages he was given have helped him land at boarding school or the University of Pennsylvania or on Fifth Avenue. In his mind, he got there because he worked hard and nothing else.
It’s no surprise, then, that his Secretary of Education nominee, Betsy DeVos, is a child of entirely private education and her children are children of entirely private education.
Trump’s would-be education secretary has no education degree and has never taught a class. Rather, she majored in business administration and political science.
Oh, and she’s a billionaire.
Where do her and her husband dump large sums of donations? Per Wiki:
She heads the All Children Matter PAC which she and her husband founded in 2003 to promote school vouchers, tax credits to businesses that give private school scholarships, and candidates who support these causes. Over the years, DeVos and her husband have provided millions in funding for the organization.
Not a word about public schools. And that’s okay, maybe, if she wasn’t nominated to be the most important person in the public school system for all Americans, and not just silver spoon sucking ones.
Clearly, based on how she gives money, public education is a lost cause. We need businesses to give private school scholarships to students (in exchange for tax credits of course) to save the best and brightest young minds from decrepit public schools.
She is also proponent of “school choice,” where parents and students can pick where students will go, instead of being lumped by district.
This sounds great, but of course it disproportionately helps families with money and resources, and doesn’t work particularly well anyway. Poorer families in rougher neighborhoods can’t just choose to send their children to new schools in wealthy neighborhoods.
On top of that, school choice drains funding from schools that really need it and calls into questions violations of the Establishment Clause’s separation of church and state (as public funds are providing vouchers to some religious institutions).
The issue is complicated: vouchers, charters, tax havens and non-profit statuses. It has become intentionally harder to follow and untangle.
But think about it this way: private hedge funds are now looking to profiteer in the charter school business. Yes it’s now officially an investible business model.
Horace Mann’s vision was public education.
But now, under Secretary DeVos, public education is very likely to be big private business.
-56 days in, 1517 to go
