Education Op/Ed
Gov. Phil Scott proclaimed the week of Jan. 23–29 as School Choice Week. While this action may at first glance appear to be generally supportive of Vermont’s excellent education opportunities, closer inspection reveals a more troubling backstory. As reported in the Washington Post (Jan. 21, 2019, “School Choice Week. What is that: Possibly not what you think”), School Choice Week is the product of National School Choice Week, a national organization whose apparently benign exercise in boosterism is promoted by activist organizations who, in the name of choice, seek to reduce public school opportunities.
A leading proponent of National School Choice Week is the conservative Gleason Family Foundation. According to a 2020 article in In The Public Interest (“National School Choice Week is actually about promoting certain choices over others”), “The Gleason Family Foundation … had given money to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Cato Institute, the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice (now called EdChoice), and countless other conservative organizations bent on privatizing public education.”
One notable National School Choice Week advocate has been Betsy DeVos, former Secretary of Education in the Trump administration. DeVos and her family’s foundation have spent millions campaigning for the privatization of public schools at taxpayers’ expense.
The current president of National School Choice Week, Andrew Campenella, formerly worked with DeVos at the American Federation for Children, itself a conservative advocacy group that works closely with ALEC. (ALEC, which benefits from Koch brothers funding, functions as a “bill mill” that provides sympathetic state legislators and other leaders pre-written drafts of conservative legislation, including language intended to diminish public schools through such strategies as diverting taxpayer funds to privatization efforts and opposing teacher unions.)
Perhaps Gov. Scott and his handlers were unaware of this divisive, reactionary and politicized background when he issued his School Choice Week proclamation. Perhaps not. While the governor enjoys broad support, it’s wise to remember that he remains resolutely a member of the Republican Party, an entity now careening to the right, and he may be increasingly pressured to bend before the ill winds that are blowing from that direction.
Of course, the governor is right to celebrate Vermont’s educational opportunities, as he expressed in his proclamation. However, had the governor adhered to Vermont’s independent tradition, he could have otherwise offered this justifiable recognition without aligning himself with those who would seek to diminish the foundation of Vermont’s fine education opportunities: its publicly accountable, community-based, and democratically led public schools.
Peter Huber
Monkton
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February 03, 2022 at 11:40PM
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Letter to the editor: 'School choice' could lead to reduced opportunities - Addison County Independent
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