Billionaire Education Secretary Betsy DeVos: Choosing a School Should Be Like Choosing Uber, Lyft or a Taxi

Betsy DeVos Wants For-Profit Schools to Treat Children as Profit Centers and Cash-Carrying Commodities

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, near the top of the list of PresidentÂ Donald Trump’s most unqualified cabinet appointees, this week shared her vision for the future of education in America. The billionaire heiress Â â€“ Forbes reports she and her husband are worth $5.6 billionÂ â€“ thinks picking a school should be just like picking transportation options.

DeVos is an anti-public schools, pro-school vouchers activist. She has spent decades advancing what some like to call “school choice,” the practice of taking taxpayer dollars out of often-desperate public schools and giving them to parents to use to pay private, prep, charter, or religious schools. (Yes, in a growing number of states, private religious schools are allowed to accept taxpayer funds, including school vouchers.) The net effect is less money going toward public schools, which are already in many cases vastly under-funded.Â

“How many of you got here today in an Uber, or Lyft, or another ridesharing service?” DeVos on WednesdayÂ asked an audience at the Brookings Institution, just one month after saying Black colleges were the “real pioneers” of school choice.Â “Did you choose that because it was more convenient than hoping a taxi would drive by? Even if you didnâ€™t use a ridesharing service, Iâ€™m sure most of you at least have the app on your phone,” she said, as The Washington Post reported.

“Just as the traditional taxi system revolted against ridesharing, so too does the education establishment feel threatened by the rise of school choice. In both cases, the entrenched status quo has resisted models that empower individuals,” DeVos continued, ignoring the fact that many families can’t afford to use Uber, or even take a taxi.

“Nobody mandates that you take an Uber over a taxi, nor should they. But if you think ridesharing is the best option for you, the government shouldnâ€™t get in your way.”

“The truth is that in practice, people like having more options. They like being able to choose between Uber Pool, Uber X, Lyft Line, Lyft Plus, and many others. Or when it comes to taking a family trip, many like options such as Airbnb,” DeVos said, again ignoring that her core constituency is children, too many of whom are living in poverty.

“We celebrate the benefits of choices in transportation and lodging. But doesnâ€™t that pale in comparison to the importance of educating the future of our country? Why do we not allow parents to exercise that same right to choice in the education of their child?”

Well, Secretary DeVos, I’ll tell you: Education is not like riding in a car.Â

The goal of a good education is to teach children not only facts, but to teach them how to think, to be curious, to understand the world around them and how to successfully live in it with other people. It should teach them about different cultures, how to be a good citizen, and how to best become the person they want to be. And it should teach them about the past while preparingÂ them for the future.

“School choice,” especially the kind of school choice DeVos has worked hard to advance, is unaccountable, and for-profit. It uses children as cash-carrying commodities. So, maybe DeVos’s analogy was a bit off.

So here’s what she should have said: Choosing a school shouldn’t be like choosing Uber or Lyft or a taxi. But those unaccountable corporate entities often do see their passengers the way for-profit schools often see children: as profit centers andÂ cash-carrying commodities.

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