Commentary
Former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has come up with a bold, liberating approach to giving younger Americans the best possible education. She calls it education freedom.
Education freedom is an important concept because it recognizes both the structural and technological opportunities for learning that have emerged since the development of the school choice movement. School choice began in Wisconsin under Gov. Tommy Thompson and State Rep. Polly Williams (a former welfare recipient who was Jessie Jackson’s state chair and became the longest serving Wisconsin state legislator with 30 years of service).
The addition of vouchers was the bold reform of 1989. However, at the time we assumed the only delivery system for learning was made up of physical schools. Vouchers sought to both expand the opportunities for students and parents to find the right schools for their needs and put competitive pressure on unionized public school bureaucracies and force them to improve or lose students….