In light of my experiences as a parent with an HG+ child in a virtual charter school, and the daughter of a dedicated career educator, I find this nomination abhorrent in every way.
We have endured the kind of "choice" that she is apparently championing. It's what got my daughter 32 hours of scheduled instruction the year that she took second year German in high school. Oh-- and about 15 hours of instructional support of any kind the year that she took AP Statistics. Yes, I said "year."
Not sure I entirely follow here. When I look outside-in Detroit has a history of miserable public schools which doomed generations of kids. My understanding of the concept Devos championed is of allowing parents to pull kids out and send them to private schools with vouchers. Seems like something is better than nothing. It especially allows gifted kids some alternative. Am I missing something fundamental?
Quite possibly--
The basic math only works if you aren't low income-- and by low income, I mean that your income is not in the bottom half of incomes, likely--
average private school tuition is over 9K, and voucher programs at best come in at about 4K. So assuming that even with scholarships, you're still looking to PAY to send your child to a private school-- and for a family struggling to pay their utilities, that's just not happening. Even if you can scrape together the resources to pay tuition, if the school isn't in your neighborhood, there are massive logistical challenges involved.
Of course, the families that are already sending their children to private schools can use the extra cash to pay for things like club sports. But they probably aren't the ones needing the help.
Her record on charter schools is what I was referring to, however. My daughter, being a student with a disability, was decidedly
unwelcome at local schools that COULD reject her. We know, because we looked into that. I can't tell you how painful that was to admit, even a decade later. If they didn't accept federal funds (and even a few who did-- they just BELIEVED that they didn't have to comply with federal mandates regarding access); they could and did just tell us to pound sand. Or refuse our calls and ignore our e-mails.
If we heard anything at all, it was--
"Upon reflection, we believe that our program is probably not well-suited to {my child's name}."
"After consideration, we have decided that {schoolname} can't provide {my child's name} with a safe learning environment..."
So it was public school (obligated under federal law to provide FAPE to my child) or no school at all. Even so, the charter school(s) often balked, threw up roadblocks-- it took
years of wrangling, and believe me, I know what I'm doing as a parent advocate.
What of those parents who don't??
So yes, for children who are from desperately poor households, for those who have disabilities, this nomination is (in my opinion) an imminent disaster in every way.
All her policies do is leave kids who have no other options in schools that are then less financially capable of meeting their obligations to those remaining children.
