Education offered to students attending American public schools is often taken for granted. One of the reasons why thousands of people leave the Caribbean every year is for the opportunity to provide their children the quality education available in public schools in this country.
In South Florida, residents are particularly impressed with the improvement in the quality of public school education thanks to the hard work of respective county school superintendents like Robert Runcie in Broward, Alberto Carvalho in Miami-Dade and Robert Avossa in Palm Beach. These men are unabashed advocates for insisting the highest quality of public education is provided, ensuring students graduate at a high rate, equipped to embark on a higher education, or an early start in their chosen careers.
However, as dedicated and resilient as the region’s local officials are in enhancing the quality of public education, ultimately the policies they adapt is dependent on state and federal educational policies, and the funding allocated.
For eight-years under the Obama administration the federal government placed special emphasis on enhancing the quality of the nation’s education from kindergarten to high school through programs like Race to the Top, and Common Core.
With the change in administration, there’s a new Secretary of Education, Betsy Devos, in charge of directing America’s education policy.
With Devos’ appointment there’s tremendous concern that she will not support the maintenance or development of public education as Americans have come to experience it for decades.
Devos is a Michigan millionaire who chaired that state’s Republican Party. She also headed an organization called the “American Federation for Children,” the objective of which is to privatize education. In Michigan, she sought to change state policy to provide school vouchers to allow public school students to attend private, charter, and religious schools. She has publicly said public schools fail American students, although she has no direct experience with these schools. She has never attended, taught, served on the board, or had children who attend, public schools.
The debate between public education, which provide proven adequate education for some 90 percent of American students, and the provision of vouchers to attend private schools has been enduring. However, the proponents for public education have prevailed in the effort of maintaining top quality education for students.
There’s concern the voucher system will perpetuate an educational system where the education from kindergarten to high-school will be based on profit, similar to the education offered by the core of for-profit colleges. With private schools competing for students equipped with school vouchers, it’s feared the quality of public education will diminish.
This is not an unfounded concern. For-profit charter schools have been criticized for ineffective oversight or accountability. Private schools have been criticized for their elitist acceptance policies, tending to accept socially privileged students. Public schools in South Florida are not known to discriminate.
In Michigan were Devos reportedly spent over $33 million to fund the expansion of for-profit charter schools, a large percentage of Michigan’s charter schools are rated in the bottom tier of the nation’s schools. The Detroit media have conducted investigations into these schools revealing poor student performance, corruption and lack of accountability.
Now, one of the strongest proponents of private schools is leading the nation’s education system controlling $20 billion allocated to fund public education. There’s concern she’ll adhere to President Trump repeated campaign promise to redirect spending of these funds from traditional public school to vouchers for students to attend private schools. Trump also made no secret on the presidential campaign trail that he wants to scrap the Common Core education policy, and wants to minimize government’s involvement in education.
If Devos is allowed to pursue the education policies she sought to pursue in Michigan, there’s real risk of the deterioration of the quality of education offered in public schools. Funding would be depleted to maintain hiring of talented teachers; impressive sports and program would suffer, as would the special education these schools offer to children with disabilities, and migrant children who are challenged in understanding English. Moreover, unless the voucher system for sending children to private schools are conducted on a definite objective, non-discriminatory basis, public schools could be mostly occupied by students from the nation’s minority and low-income populations. Eventually, several public schools would close.
It’s now become imperative that the US Congress, State Legislatures, and county school districts be adamant in their resolve to preserve the public education system, and seek to build on the foundation left by the Obama administration. The nation cannot afford to sacrifice the gains made in public education, and the future of millions of its children to a capitalistic system that places education on sale.
