About 50 of the nation’s K-12 private school leaders met with U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos on March 20 in Washington, D.C. to discuss the new Every Student Succeeds Act and its potential for improving education in America.
Betsy DeVos, US DOE Secretary of Education, The Rev. Daniel Heischman, CAPE Board President, and Ebony Lee, US DOE Staff. Photo courtesy of CAPE.
Attendees included WCRIS Executive Director Sharon Schmeling and Jim Rademan, Director of WELS Commission on Lutheran Schools, who is on the Board of Directors of the Council for American Private Education (CAPE), which sponsored the meeting.
WCRIS is the official Wisconsin affiliate of CAPE, which has chapters in 35 states and territories.
The group met with Secretary DeVos at the US Department of Education for about an hour and had a wide-ranging discussion with DeVos, who specifically sought input from attendees.
“I want to advance and support life long learning and parental choice,” DeVos told the CAPE contingent in describing her over-arching goals for the U.S. Department of Education.
In their wide-ranging discussion, DeVos asked the group how the federal government can help ensure quality in K-12 education through a school choice model, in addition to the substantial quality control parents naturally bring to the table.
Joe McTighe, CAPE Executive Director addresses Sec. DeVos, at the US DOE. Photo courtesy of CAPE
Several attendees, including WCRIS Executive Director Schmeling, urged support for accreditation as the check on educational quality.
Later that day, the CAPE group heard from Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), chairwoman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee.
Foxx extolled the virtues of the Every Student Succeeds Act, which is the federal government’s signature education law for K-12 students.
“It’s a step towards local control, and we are excited we have a Secretary of Education that is seeing things in a different way,” Foxx told the CAPE group.
CAPE group talks ESSA and private schools with Sec. DeVos. Photo courtesy of CAPE.
“She is supporting and not discouraging innovative parental choices and Speaker Ryan is bringing it up every chance he gets,” Foxx said of Secretary DeVos and Wisconsin’s own Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Janesville).
“The federal government, in my opinion, got way too involved in education,” Foxx said of previous versions of the the law, which was first passed in 1965 as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The law gets reauthorized by Congress every five years and labeled with a new title (i.e. No Child Left Behind; Every Student Succeeds Act) that highlights its goals.
“We’re going to try to unwind that and give control back to parents and to local folks. We are getting away from ‘the one-size-fits-all’ approach to education,” Foxx concluded.
