New Year, New President... Now What?

The heated presidential race leading up to the election of Donald Trump in November of 2016 has revealed a starkly divisive America. Of course, this is not to say that we weren't a divided country prior to Trump's campaign, but the campaign's rhetoric added fuel to the already existing polarization. As Trump continues to settle in, what does this new presidency mean for our education system? 

Meet Betsy DeVos, Trump's pick for Secretary of Education. She is a proponent of "school choice" and "voucher-system schooling." This perspective encourages competition among schools, allowing parents to choose "for profit" private or charter schools for their students to attend, instead of investing in the public school system. It mimics "the market" in that the worse products, i.e. schools, are weeded out while the best ones survive market forces (theoretically). However, market choices in this sense typically favor those who are actually empowered to choose -- the wealthy -- while being hardest on the poor and marginalized who don't have the benefit of choosing. 

Read more about the potential "marketization" of our domestic school system in this article published by The Atlantic.