Betsy DeVos moves to push military families into voucher program

The following article by A.P. Joyce was posted on the mic.com website April 20, 2018:

President Trump greets Education Secretary Betsy DeVos during a White House event last year. Credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is now working to switch to vouchers for school funding for our nation’s military families, and many of them are not happy about it.

On Wednesday, U.S. News and World Report reported that DeVos was meeting with Defense Secretary James Mattis to discuss a plan that would change the way schools on military bases are funded.

Currently military bases and other tax-exempt places fund public schools through a $1.3 billion Impact Aid program. DeVos’ plan would reallocate that money for vouchers that families could use to send their kids to private schools.

 In a letter to Congress, the military advocacy group The Military Coalition wrote that the plan would be, “financially devastating for many school districts” and would critically compromise “the quality of the education they could provide to military children and their civilian classmates.”