The Maine Education Association is vowing to push back against newly confirmed U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, concerned that DeVos will weaken public schools.
MEA president Lois Kilby-Chesley says the confirmation of Betsy DeVos poses a direct threat to public schools because the new education secretary favors charter schools.
“Those sorts of things aren’t really aren’t meant to equalize education,” she says. “Those are meant to stratify. And so, one of the things that we believe is that public education is the great equalizer, and that every child should be given the chance to have a great public education.”
Kilby-Chesley says her organization is working with others within the National Education Association to create a watchdog group and a plan to resist DeVos’s policies. The MEA and others criticized DeVos in the weeks leading up to her confirmation because of her lack of experience in public education.
“She didn’t go to public schools, her kids didn’t go to public schools. She’s never been a teacher or an administrator. She’s never been on a school board,” Kilby-Chesley says.
But DeVos’s supporters see that as an asset, and that the new head of the Department of Education will empower states and parents to have greater choice in children’s education.
