In a sweeping change to the nation's education system, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said decisions about offering school choice will be left up to the states and not through mandates by the federal government, Politico reported Monday.
In a speech Monday evening to a group she previously chaired, DeVos told attendees at a summit in Indianapolis hosted by the American Federation for Children that no solutions "should be dictated or run from Washington, D.C.," in providing the best learning environment for children.
"We won't accomplish our goals by creating a new federal bureaucracy or by bribing states with their own taxpayers' money," she said. "We should have zero interest in substituting the current big government approach for our own big government approach."
DeVos explained the administration of President Donald Trump would propose "the most ambitious expansion of education choice in our nation's history" through various programs that will fund school choice options by way of grants and tax credits.
Education could also be impacted by new tax reforms the administration is considering as well.
States would have the option to participate. Students living in states that do could have more choices about schools they want to attend, with possible scholarships to enable low-income families to pay tuition for private education.
The proposals are not without critics on the right and the left. Conservative think tanks the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute as well as the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association find fault with the proposal for various reasons.
Trump's budget plan, expected to be released Tuesday, looks to cut many traditional education programs while including new grant opportunities that would allow students to choose which public school they wanted to attend.
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