**To be honest, I don’t like writing about politics. With that being said though, I feel like it was necessary to follow up on a previous article I had written. Although my first article was focused on the topic of gun control and more specifically guns in schools, this article revolves around the topic of public education funding. For anyone who reads this article, I’m not trying to start an argument. I’m not protesting. As a member of the younger generation I’m genuinely interested specifically in this area of education and what effects will form as a result. In order to move forward I believe that we need to start looking at the facts and then analyze those to determine what is and isn’t working. **
As many of us know, Betsy DeVos was nominated and then officially elected as the Secretary of Education on February 7th, 2017. After a long wait with baited breath, and a nail-biting tie between the Democrats and Republicans, Vice-President Mike Pence voted to confirm DeVos as the new Secretary of Education. This was the first time in Senate history that a vice-president was called upon to break a tie. According to CNN, when asked about his history-making vote, Vice-President Mike Pence said it was “the easiest vote he’d ever cast” (http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/07/politics/betsy-devos...).
If so many people despise DeVos, how did she become our newest Secretary of Education? Even Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska had voiced their opinions and plans to vote against her.
As many can imagine, those who were for DeVos and voted in favor were all Republican senators while majority of those who voted against her were Democratic, with the execption of few (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/02/07/us/...). As stated before, the vote reached a tie of 50-50 before Vice President Mike Pence cast his vote in favor of DeVos.
Immediately after news broke of DeVos’s election, people expressed their dislike of the new Secretary of Education. Scott DiMauro, Vice President of the Ohio Education Association, was just one of many educators to express his views on DeVos. As stated in an article on Fox45Now, DiMauro claims that he was “very disappointed by the outcome of the vote but incredibly energized by the level of resistance we have seen over the last few weeks."
Perhaps what was so shocking about DeVos is that she has no formal background in education, yet she is now responsible for controlling just that. Experience is key for taking on such a major, governmental role and experience is just one of the elements that are missing not only with DeVos but throughout the entire election as well.
In response to DeVos’s new position, “activists made 30,000 calls to Senate offices” and created petitions that drew in a record number of signatures. According to Heidi Hess, who runs campaigns for CREDO, an American mobile network operator company, commented on the petitions signatures saying, “A million and a half is just unprecedented. It's another scale of magnitude."
From the beginning DeVos made it clear that she favored and still favors charter and private education over public education. A key aspect of DeVos’s administration would be privatizing public schools. Several interviews have caught DeVos’s favoritism of private and charter schools over public education. Only recognizing successful public schools, DeVos believes that those that are below standards and are struggling due to funding and other issues should be abandoned rather than improved.
As a student who attended public schools k-12, the idea of cutting funding for public schools would quite frankly do more harm than good. Having attended the largest public high school in my hometown area, I witnessed a lack of necessary supplies such as books and even laptops and computers. My school constantly put on fundraisers and participated in contests in order to win grants and funding.
The reason why so many public schools are falling below standards is not due to their location, or race of students. It’s because of the lack of funding that is already an issue, an issue that needs to be fixed, not ignored.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, as of fall 2016 50.4 million students attend public schools for elementary and secondary education. An additional 5.2 million students attend private schools. Compared to the 50.4 million that attend public school, the number of students enrolled in private education seems miniscule. With these numbers in mind it would only make sense to put more funding into public schools, and fix the ones that are failing in order to bring them up to standards.
By seemingly ignoring public schools, which makes up for majority of education in the United States, we would be creating a bigger problem. To fix the education issues, we need to create a balance between types of schooling not place more of an imbalance between public and private education.
If I included everything about DeVos and her ideas for education in this article we would be here a while. Therefore, in order to conclude this piece I wish that everyone would keep one thing in mind. We cannot keep creating arguments based solely on our opinions. We need to analyze facts in order to be able to see clearly on a subject. I know that in my previous article I made it clear (or tried at least) that DeVos was not fit for this position. To be honest, I still believe that. Not just because of her views of funding for public schools, but also because of her views on letting states decide the role of guns in schools and her overall lack of knowledge.
In order to stand in line with other countries education, we need to make ours a priority. We need what’s best for our country, for our educators, and most importantly for our students.
