WASHINGTON, D.C. – Teachers’ unions and the education establishment reacted with predictable scorn to the nomination of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education.
But parents have reason to be optimistic, and for one simple reason: DeVos has been a champion for educational choice across the country.
Her support for school choice goes beyond mere lip service. She has worked to advance viable options for students and families, including charter schools, vouchers, tuition tax credit scholarships and education savings accounts (ESAs).
That support for education choice will be a welcome change of pace, particularly for poor children living in the nation’s capital.
For the past eight years, the Obama administration has tried, almost annually, to zero-out funding for the wildly successful D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP).
This despite the fact that a random assignment evaluation conducted by the U.S. Department of Education revealed that use of an OSP scholarship increased graduation rates for participants by 21 percentage points.
Those findings would be notable in and of themselves – increasing graduation rates is a long-held education policy goal – but are particularly spectacular given that the voucher provided through the OSP awards just a fraction of what is spent on the District of Columbia’s public schools.
Revenue per-pupil in the district tops $29,400 per pupil per year. The program awards scholarships of up to $8,452 to children in grades K through 8, and up to $12,679 to students in grades 9 – 12.
Even at the upper end of the scholarship amount, the vouchers are less than half the per-pupil revenue in the district and are spurring graduation rates that outpace the national average and far outpace the average in the District.
Support for the OSP from Betsy DEVos will be a breath of fresh air for children in the nation’s capital.
Although the federal government is limited in what it can do to advance education choice, supporting the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, and encouraging its expansion, is one option.
The incoming administration, along with Congress, should also work to transform D.C. into an all-choice District, empowering every family with education choice through universal education savings accounts.
Secretary-designate DeVos should also consider education savings accounts for military-connected children, and should work to create education savings accounts for children attending Bureau of Indian Education schools, which have been identified as the worst-performing schools in the country.
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Support for education choice will not be the only education policy issues facing the secretary and incoming administration.
The federal college student loan albatross also must be tackled, and policies that have enabled the accumulation of $1.3 trillion in outstanding student loan debt – up from $240 billion just since 2003 – will no doubt feature prominently in the pending reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA).
Long-term defaults stand at around $125 billion today. Add to that the Government Accountability Office’s finding earlier this month that public sector loan forgiveness will cost taxpayers more than $100 billion. Reform is desperately needed.
In addition to supporting choice at the K-12 level, DeVos also will have to grapple with these realities in higher education.
In order to decrease loan burdens and place pressure on colleges to rein-in college costs, the PLUS loan program should be eliminated in order to make way for more flexible private funding alternatives.
The incoming administration has a major opportunity to advance education choice as appropriate, to move toward policies that can rein-in college costs, and to dramatically downsize the federal Department of Education.
Pursuing a package of reforms that begins the important work of making federal education funding limited, targeted, and as appropriate, student-centered and portable, can help restore state and local control of education – and better serve students and taxpayers nationwide.
Lindsey M. Burke is a Fellow in Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank on Capitol Hill ([url=http://www.heritage.org]http://www.heritage.org[/url].) She holds a master of teaching degree in foreign language education from the University of Virginia. Readers may write her at Heritage, 214 Massachusetts Ave NE, Washington DC 20002-4999.
