Yesterday the Senate voted along party lines to send President Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s confirmation to a vote early next week. Now last week my fellow VG Gail wrote about Mrs. DeVos and asked whether she was a good or bad choice for education. Clearly the Democrats, especially Chuck Schumer (D-NY), think that she is “the worst nominee ever” since not one of them voted for her. Big shock. As a resident of the state whose teachers union pays more per teacher to political causes than any other ($400 per teacher per year) I am not surprised. I have watched the public employees unions rake the state over the coals time and time again (causing a multi-billion dollar shortfall in the state’s budget). I suspect that the teachers unions in Sharon Collins’ (R-AZ) and Lisa Murkowski’s  (R-AK) states got to them on this nominee since Mrs. DeVos represents a threat to the status quo-which is largely failing our children.

As the mother of a child who learns differently  I can tell you the top five reasons why I think we need Betsy DeVos in this position.

5. She is an advocate for children who sorely need one-Betsy DeVos has donated millions of dollars of her family’s money to schools that dovetailed with their belief system. She is literally being criticized for doing something that anyone can do-she just happened to be able to do it with millions of dollars instead of $50. I think that charitable giving is something to be lauded, especially when one has a lot of money to give. Because of her donations, Christian schools were able to serve kiddos they might not have been able to serve. I just cannot figure out why that is a bad thing. Except religion, or something.

4. She is an advocate for school choice and has lobbied for programs that would allow children who might not have the opportunity otherwise to attend private schools. As a resident of a state with a 63% graduation rate I can tell you that there are many in my state who would move their children into private school in a second-if they only had the money to pay the tuition. I always ask people who are against vouchers “Why do children of lower income families not deserve to attend a private school, especially if their neighborhood public school is a failing school or is gang infested?”. Oddly enough, no one ever has answered that question in a way that made sense to me. Usually this is where they roll their eyes and walk away.

3. If her donations to free market think tanks inform her views on education-the competition school choice could bring may be a good thing. In free markets competition is a good thing. Bad ideas fail and good ideas rise to the top of the marketplace. Why should education be any different? Whole language  reading instruction was a dismal failure in the 1990’s but that did not mean that it was weeded out of education until much later. How many children struggled because of that educational trend? How many adults still experience difficulty reading due to it? I am all for shaking up the educational market place and seeing who rises and who falls. With school choice, many parents will be able to put their children into private schools which will offer further diversity in educational approaches and make some modalities, like Waldorf, more accessible across income lines. I fail to see who loses in this equation.

2. There are significant numbers of children getting left behind by our current school system. Watch the documentary “Waiting for Superman” sometime. It is depressing as all get out but it shows that today’s educational system is not serving all children in this country. Charter schools and private schools can help address this issue. Why would we not want this? In my state the local dyslexia association got all excited about legislation that “required” dyslexia screening in our public schools. If you read the law though it plainly states that if a school requests a waiver they can become exempt from providing the screening services. Yes, all a school has to do is plead poverty and they don’t have to provide the screening. Also it doesn’t really help anyway since treatment is not available in schools in our state and private tutors run around $60 per hour. Most people cannot afford that and so as many as 5% of the children in our state will continue to struggle simply because the schools refuse to help and their parents cannot afford the services that could help them.

1. And finally my last reason, it is easier to be a change agent from outside the system you are trying to change.  As the daughter of educators, and a former educator myself, I can tell you that the system needs to change. As I have stated above, it is a system that no longer in concerned with serving our children-it is a system concerned with serving itself. I can also tell you as someone with years of experience in process refinement and an advanced degree in Organizational Management that organizations do not change unless something major is causing them to do so. Be it a law, or a shift in the marketplace. Betsy DeVos being the Secretary of Education just might be a yuuugggge help to force the educational system in this country to change.