What Does Betsy DeVos Know About Public Education?
Betsy DeVos testifies before the Senate Health, Education and Labor Committee confirmation hearing to be next Secretary of Education on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., January 17, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
March 28, 2017
Over the past one hundred and fifty years, education has seen much reform and controversy. It started in 1925 with the Scopes Monkey Trial, arguing the teaching of evolution in state funded classrooms.
McCollum versus the Board of Education prohibited students from religious learning in the classroom, and in 2001 the Bush Administration created the No Child Left Behind program incentivizing student performance and raising the standards of American schools.
Over Obama’s 8 years in office, the presidential administration pushed for higher education among its top priorities passing an Economic Stimulus Bill, providing billions of dollars in financial aid to college students.
No we are in the time of Common Core, a set of shared academic for english and math that all students should master before getting into the real world.
After the election of President Trump, one of the first moves he made was finding a new Secretary of Education. His nominee for the position in the House was Betsy DeVos.
After careful consideration and voting, DeVos drew a 50-50 split in the House which was broken by Vice President Mike Pence in favor of the new Secretary.
Immediately after the election of the new Secretary, Trump and DeVos received much hate and negative remarks for their goals in education for the nation.
Many claim that DeVos will make quality education more accessible to underprivileged individuals, and will lead the government to return the power of education to the states.
People who voted against the election of Betsy DeVos believe she is unfit for the job being that she is a billionaire with not much experience in the realm of education. She is also rejected because she is an advocate for vouchers and having investments with conflicting interests.
Recently, Trump and DeVos have agreed that they need to support all secondary avenues of education.
There is speculation that DeVos is advocating for the removal of free lunch for less privileged students. As many know, a school lunch is sometimes the only meal these children get on a daily basis.
With the removal of a free lunch students will suffer in the classroom not being able to pay attention constantly pondering the thought of a warm meal rather than the square root of sigma divided fifty.
No direct threats have been proposed, but last year there was a bill that had the potential to make millions of students ineligible for free lunch in public schools.