Head of Democrats For Education Reform blasts DeVos, calls push for vouchers a ‘sideshow’
It’s a tough time to be a Democrat for education reform.
After eight years with one of the original DFER members, President Obama, in the White House, the well-financed organization is under siege from both the left and right.
On one side are fellow progressives critical of the expansion of charter schools and test-based school accountability — whose backlash was epitomized by the rejection of an initiative to expand charters in Massachusetts, which was backed by DFER’s chapter there. On the other side are Republicans who are most interested in pushing for public funding of private schools and are skeptical of testing and standards, including the Common Core. Add President Trump to that mix, whose support of charter schools may alienate Democrats otherwise open to supporting them.
With all that in mind, Chalkbeat sat down with DFER’s president Shavar Jeffries at the New Schools Venture Fund summit to ask, what now?
Fighting Betsy DeVos and the Trump administration at large, he said, arguing that their policies are likely to harm students inside and outside of schools. He also defended charter schools as effective options for kids, saying they have to comply “with the same civil rights law, the same accountability standard, [and] have to be transparent in terms of their finances.” (This point, it’s worth noting, isn’t true in many cases, and remains a point of significant controversy.)Head of Democrats For Education Reform blasts DeVos, calls push for vouchers a ‘sideshow’ | Chalkbeat:
