‘Brazen Effort to Distort the Tax Code’: Betsy DeVos Not Giving Up on Vouchers
In her two years as U.S. Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos has seized on every opportunity to undermine public education. She has called for deep cuts to federal funding, rolled back protections for our most vulnerable students and shilled for the for-profit college industry that has defrauded countless students.
DeVos has floundered, however, in advancing her pet cause: the federal expansion of school vouchers. Even with GOP majorities in the House and Senate and the strong backing of President Trump, Congress in 2017 and 2018 rejected DeVos’ efforts to create federal vouchers to attend private schools.
Despite this setback and the recent 2018 elections that sent a pro-public education majority to the House of Representatives, DeVos’ enthusiasm for school vouchers hasn’t dampened. This was evident last week with the introduction of something called the Education Freedom Scholarships and Opportunity Act.
In a USA Today op-ed touting the proposal, DeVos, Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Bradley Byrne, the bills’ sponsors in Congress, called it “a historic investment in America’s students.”
The majority of Americans who reject vouchers know better. DeVos’ proposal, said NEA President Lily Eskelsen García, is just the “latest attempt to push an agenda that is academically ineffective, fiscally irresponsible and that funds discrimination at the expense of student opportunity.”
The good news is that Congress – who soundly rejected a similar proposal during the 2017 tax debate – isn’t likely to give this reboot a serious look.Still, the corporate interests who have doggedly pursued school privatization for more than a decade are nothing if not persistent, which is why public education activists aren’t about to let down their guard.
What is an Education Freedom Scholarship?
Quite simply, it’s a federal school voucher. For years now, proponents, CONTINUE READING: 'Brazen Effort to Distort the Tax Code': DeVos Won't Give Up on Vouchers
