ALEC Chooses to Omit US Ed Sec Betsy DeVos from Its 2017 Conference Speaker Listing
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is holding its 44th Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado, from July 19-21, 2017.
US ed sec Betsy DeVos is supposed to speak at ALEC on Thursday. However, ALEC has chosen to exclude her from its listing of conference speaker profiles.
Perhaps this is one means of ALEC’s trying to hide DeVos from expected protestsfor her presence there and involvement with ALEC. Nevertheless, her presence as a lunchtime speaker on July 20, 2017, has been confirmed by an ALEC spokesperson.
Even as ALEC tries to downplay DeVos’ presence at its conference, ALEC continues to obviously promote its views regarding American education— including five “key points” for the legislators it commands:
An excellent education has long been recognized as key to the American Dream. Unfortunately, the current monopolistic and expensive K-12 education system is failing our students, leaving them unprepared for college, careers, or life. Similarly, our higher education system is leaving students with higher debt burdens and fewer career guarantees than ever before.While the left argues that our ailing public education system can be fixed with ever-greater quantities of taxpayer dollars, the more than $600 billion we currently spend nationwide reflects a large increase in funds over the last 30 years, in exchange for total stagnation – or worse, declines – in achievement. On the college level, subsidies meant to help college students struggling to pay tuition have instead caused prices to skyrocket well above inflation.Instead of throwing more money at the problem, it’s time to let parents take back control over their children’s educations by allowing them to apply competitive pressure to schools and educational providers. Innovative, parent-empowering choices such as charter schools, voucher programs, tax credit scholarships, homeschool, and education savings accounts allow each child the opportunity to reach his or her potential. In higher education, greater transparency is needed to ensure that students and parents know what they are paying for, and with what prospects they are likely to graduate.Instead of endless top-down mandates, these revolutionary inroads into the education system are coming from the states. Forty-two states and the District of Columbia have laws on the books allowing charter schools to operate, whileALEC Chooses to Omit US Ed Sec Betsy DeVos from Its 2017 Conference Speaker Listing | deutsch29:
