Wisconsin legislators and public school supporters remain wary following controversial Secretary of Education nominee Betsy DeVos’s confirmation hearing in Washington, D.C., Tuesday.
President-elect Donald Trump’s appointment of billionaire DeVos to the position has been hotly contested both in Washington and throughout the nation.
DeVos’ advocacy for school choice in the form of taxpayer-funded voucher schools and charter schools has also raised concern. She chairs the nation’s largest nonprofit that promotes school choice programs.
“[DeVos] has never served or been involved in public education in any capacity,” said state Rep. Sondy Pope, D-Cross Plains. “She clearly does not understand education issues and her nomination presents an irrefutable conflict of interest.”
DeVos’ appointment highlights a continuous debate over whether state government should give parents a voucher that pays for their child to go to a private school of their parents' choosing rather than a local public school they would otherwise attend.
Proponents of federal funding for voucher schools say that it will allow parents to decide where their children go to school and aid low-income students in attending private schools.
Charter schools were created to have fewer bureaucratic requirements but would still function like a regular public school, according to Michael Apple, a professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies.
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The DeVos family has donated $342,000 to Walker since 2010. Her organization, the American Federation for Children, has donated about $4.5 million to the campaigns of Wisconsin Republicans who support school choice, according to the liberal group One Wisconsin Now.
Opponents of voucher and charter schools say that the competition created between schools is actually privatizing them, meaning resources are taken away from public schools in order to fund vouchers or charters.
In Wisconsin, where some rural public schools districts have extreme shortages of teachers, some deem DeVos’s appointment “dangerous.”
“Money follows the student from the public school as a check in the form of a voucher and goes to any school the parent chooses, most of which are private schools,” Apple said.
Eighty percent of students who use vouchers in Wisconsin are already in private schools, according to Apple.
In Milwaukee, around 10,000 low-income students of color use vouchers, according to Apple. Some voucher schools in Milwaukee, however, have gone bankrupt. Consequently, students must go back to a public school that now has less funding, since its resources went toward funding the voucher school that closed.
“We know from [Milwaukee] that voucher schools don’t do better than regular public schools, and they drains resources from public schools,” said Apple.
A recent report from the Wisconsin Budget Project found that funding cuts for education have made it difficult for school districts to find quality teachers, especially teachers who will work in rural districts for low pay.
At UW-Madison, the effects of fewer resources for public schools is that fewer students are becoming teachers, according to Apple.
“The private sector is not the solution,” said Apple. “Schools should never be a source of profit-making.”
