Borsuk: Table set for major school choice push
A new president and a new secretary of education. They say the status quo in education is unacceptable. They support big ideas involving billions of federal dollars.
Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos? It’s certainly shaping up that way.
But this also describes George W. Bush and Rod Paige after the 2000 election (No Child Left Behind) and Barack Obama and Arne Duncan after the 2008 election (the Race to the Top). You might add to the list Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton.
Many have tried to use big presidential initiatives to change the status quo. For the most part, the status has kept quoing along.
This time for sure?
Well, this time is, for sure, going to be different. The table has never been set like it is now for a nationwide push for school vouchers, charter schools, tax credits for paying for private schooling, or other ideas for how government can help parents send their kids to schools outside the conventional public school system.
The president-elect and the person he has chosen for secretary of education haven’t provided any specifics yet. But the selection of DeVos shows Trump’s pledge to put $20 billion into expanding school choice nationwide is one promise he wants to keep. DeVos, a super-rich Republican leader from Michigan, has been a central figure nationwide in promoting vouchers and other school choice plans.
Wisconsin school-choice supporters cheer DeVos pick
Wisconsin offers parallels to what is shaping up nationally.
GOP gains in Wisconsin
Just as the once-every-two-years state budget gets rolling, Republicans have gained a more dominant hand in the Legislature. Gov. Scott Walker is a strong choice backer. And the makeup of the state Supreme Court makes legal challenges to anything the Republicans do difficult.
We already have hefty private school voucher programs in Milwaukee and Racine and a growing voucher scene in the rest of the state, plus a new special-education voucher program, and a convoluted but fairly lively charter school scene, particularly in Milwaukee. What more could be done?
It’s a time when school choice insiders are pulling out their wish lists and brain storming. The special ed vouchers and the statewide voucher program could be given bigger pushes. Maybe something could happen to increase the number of charter schools statewide, but charters always seem to play back-up to private schools in state politics.
Ideas such as “education savings accounts,” discussed in this column recently, are increasingly likely to emerge. Such accounts could offer parents more flexible ways to select education programs for their children, potentially including several providers. No one so far has gotten specific about what this could mean, but there’s serious interest.
Borsuk: Vouchers 2.0 could be Education Savings Accounts
If Washington unleashes a lot of money for school choice, that might bring some new federal aid to Wisconsin to support ideas like these.
Public school leaders and advocates nationwide are generally appalled by the DeVos pick and what it portends.
They have several reasons to be concerned in Wisconsin. Here are two:
What will any increase in school choice options and funding mean for state aid to public schools?
And will the Trump administration put together that $20 billion school choice fund by cutting other federal education programs, as some suggest? Reducing major areas of federal spending (particularly the Title 1 program for low-income students and federal special education aid), could mean less money for public schools, especially those serving large numbers of poor or disabled children.
It may be that the politics of what is coming in the state may pivot on sentiment in out-state areas represented by Republicans where Trump had strong support.
In a lot of those places, public schools are generally popular and respected. If public school advocates can convince people that what is shaping up is a threat to the well-being of their local public schools, new choice ideas may not be so popular.
Furthermore, choices in schooling mean more in areas where there are lots of schools to choose from. Larger cities have more schools, public and private, than rural areas or smaller cities. How much is to be gained in some places by expanding school choice?
Another thing to watch: There will be an election for state superintendent of public instruction in April. Tony Evers, who is finishing his second four-year term, is pretty much the last pillar of the public-school establishment standing in state government.
Evers is seeking re-election and three challengers have announced they are intending to run. One of them, John Humphries, a former DPI administrator who is a critic of Evers, is lining up support that includes a lot of pro-choice figures, and he issued a statement praising Trump’s choice of DeVos.
So could the April election become a form of a state referendum on school choice? Might happen.
The broadest question is what everything that is arising in Washington and Madison will mean to that status quo people want to change.
One thought: One crucial thing that’s been learned from school improvement efforts is that’s it’s very difficult work that needs to be put in the hands of talented, highly qualified people who, even as they are given freedom to innovate, are under a valuable degree of oversight and accountability.
Photos: Schools tackle chronic absenteeism
In other words, almost-unfettered freedom for school choice, like Trump and DeVos have given some indications of favoring, and like we had in earlier days of the Milwaukee voucher program, can lead to the existence of many mediocre (or worse) schools. When that happens, it is those who most need the status quo lifted who end up in the worst situations.
More choice appears to be on the way. It will help students only if it is offered in the most well-constructed ways.
Alan J. Borsuk issenior fellow in law and public policy at Marquette Law School. Reach him at alan.borsuk@marquette.edu.