Here & Now

First Look: School Choice Leader On Education Secretary Pick

Frederica Freyberg:

A first look tonight at the Trump administration and the newly sworn-in president’s priorities for public education. Ahead of the inauguration, it was a week chock full of cabinet hearings in Washington, including the hearing for Secretary of Department of Education nominee Betsy DeVos. Ms. DeVos spoke to her support of something Wisconsin is very familiar with – school choice.

Betsy DeVos:

Parents no longer believe that a one size fits all model of learning meets the need of every child. And they know other options exist, whether magnet, virtual, charter, home, faith-based or any other combination.

Frederica Freyberg:

Thanks in large measure to Betsy DeVos, Wisconsin is ahead of most of the rest of the nation when it comes to private school and voucher programs. Our first guest has been at the forefront of the choice movement in the badger state. Jim Bender is the president of School Choice Wisconsin. Thanks a lot for being here.

Jim Bender:

Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

We just heard Betsy DeVos. What’s your reaction to her being picked for this post?

Jim Bender:

Well, I think following the general theme of this entire election process, change is coming. There’s no doubt about it. Exactly what form that’s going to take, we’re going to have to find out. But right now I think her statements there were reflecting where we are not just as a state here in Wisconsin, when you look at the polling on school choice and the support that’s there now and growing. So nationally you’re seeing the same thing. Milwaukee had the first voucher program 26, 27 years ago. Now there’s 25 states that have programs. 42 states that have independent charters. You’ve got hundreds of thousands of students in there. Nationally you’re seeing a growing movement. In Wisconsin you’re seeing a growing movement. And the poll numbers and general support just keep going up and up for educational options.

Frederica Freyberg:

Describe how influential Betsy DeVos was in Wisconsin with us being at the vanguard with that Milwaukee choice program?

Jim Bender:

So I think when the program started here, you had a number of people, my predecessor of School Choice Wisconsin, Susan Mitchell worked with Tommy Thompson, Howard Fuller, Polly Williams, Tim Sheehy at MMAC to get the first program started. After that happened, then there was much more of a national movement that got started once there was one solid program. Susan Mitchell and Betsy DeVos, at that point, were part of that national movement. Betsy has led the charge since then. It’s helped promote the Milwaukee program, expand it in various forms to other states and then in return now that we’ve expanded the program outside of Milwaukee to Racine and statewide, American Federation for Children, the organization that she ran, has been influential here in Wisconsin.

Frederica Freyberg:

So should she be confirmed to this secretary post, what might that mean going forward for Wisconsin?

Jim Bender:

So they’ve talked at least President-elect Trump, now President Trump, has talked about injecting like $20 billion into school choice across the country, which would be a dramatic increase. What I think we’re finding out is that, you know, it doesn’t sound anyway like there’s going to be a new federal program to administer those dollars. They’re really looking more at block grants and interjecting not just that new money for school choice, but as I have often said, I think the whole movement is going to be kind of de-emphasizing the federal role in education. So even for traditional public schools, I think they will get much more flexibility than they’ve had in the past without all the strings being tied to federal. So I think you’re going to see block grants. I think you’re going to see more money put down to the states. And I think everybody will be beneficial — or will benefit from a reduced role from the federal government in education.

Frederica Freyberg:

What kinds of regulations from the federal Department of Education would people like yourself like to see go away?

Jim Bender:

So I think from a school choice standpoint, the federal government right now doesn’t play much of a role. The programs here in the state of Wisconsin for vouchers are funded by state dollars only. There aren’t any federal dollars that go into it. From the traditional public school side, you’ve just got — whether you’re dealing with — you know, you’ve got different title funding for teacher prep. For low-income students, you’ve got IDEA, Title IX. You’ve got all these different functions. And I don’t think that — at least what I'm hearing, you’re not seeing necessarily a reduction in any of the funding of those items, but just the way they are administered will allow local districts to have a bit more flexibility with how they’re going to be applied. In other words, I think you’ve got a number of people here in the state that are full-time employees that are on compliance measures to make sure that the federal dollars are spent the way that they’re supposed to be spent. We just got done seeing school improvement grants for the country. $7 billion was invested from 2010 to 2015. Yesterday the results came out that those dollars had no impact on improving low-performing schools across the country. So we spent $7 billion over five years through the traditional system. Arne Duncan put it in place. President Obama, one of his key measures. It’s kind of telling that it came out the day before he left office that after those $7 billion got done, there was no improvement. Part of the problem was that plan had very structured ways in which you could spend the money and didn’t give the local schools the ability to be innovative with those dollars. And we just didn’t see any results.

Frederica Freyberg:

We need to leave it there. Jim Bender, thanks very much.

Jim Bender:

Thank you.