STOP Betsy DeVos - Protect Public Education - 28:58

Betsy DeVos Trump’s Nominee for Education 
Secretary is an Enemy of Public Schools

with
Carol Corbett Burris became Executive 
Director of the Network for Public Education 
Foundation in August 2015, after serving as 
principal of South Side High School in the 
Rockville Centre School District in NY since 
2000.  In 2010, she was named Educator of 
the Year by the School Administrators 

Association of NYS and in 2013, she was 
named SAANYS NYS High School Principal 
of the Year. Dr. Burris co-authored 
Detracking for Excellence and Equity and 
authored On the Same Track: How Schools 
Can Join the 21st Century Struggle against 
Re-segregation. .

DeVos has not taught or worked in public 
schools, or been a parent of public-school 
children, or  earned experience or expertise as 
a leader, scholar, or teacher educator in public 
school districts. Yet to advance Trump’s call 
to deregulate and privatize, she would be ideal.

Through her family foundation (funded by the 
Amway fortune), and through her personal role 
on boards for such advocacy organizations as 
Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in 
Education, she has effectively leveraged her 
wealth to shape policy, including the expansion 
of school-choice and voucher programs, 
alongside the deregulation of charter schools. 
The research is clear: none of these 'reforms' 
will strengthen public education overall, and 
instead, have already proven to indirectly or 
even directly exacerbate inequities.

Public education should be treated as a 
centerpiece for strengthening any democratic 
nation, and what the U.S. needs now is not 
the heralding of silver bullets but instead the 
investment in systemic reforms that draw on

both a sound body of research and a 
compelling vision of the promises of public 
schools. The narrow and ill-informed vision 
and rhetoric put forth by Trump and DeVos 
take us in the wrong direction.

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