Betsy DeVos is a big fan—huge fan—of online charter schools, from investing in a virtual charter company in the past to pushing them in her current role as Donald Trump’s education secretary. Because to DeVos, “choice” is the top goal of the education system, rather than, you know, education:
… in Pennsylvania, an early adopter where more than 30,000 kids log into virtual charter schools from home most days, the graduation rate is a dismal 48 percent. Not one virtual charter school meets the state’s “passing” benchmark. And the founder of one of the state’s largest virtual schools pleaded guilty to a tax crime last year. [...]
… as the virtual schools have expanded, so have questions about their effectiveness. Large swaths of Pennsylvania kids leaving a brick-and-mortar school for one of the virtual charter alternatives went to one with lower math and reading performance, according to research based on the 2009-2010 school year compiled by the Pennsylvania General Assembly’s Center for Rural Pennsylvania.
Some parents love virtual schools. Some parents also don't believe in vaccinating their kids and make any number of other bad choices. When we’re talking about government funding, the question should not be “can you find some people who like a thing,” it should be “is this thing effective? Is it good for society? If it supposedly exists to educate children, does it do an acceptable job at educating children?”
But those are not the questions Betsy DeVos wants the federal government asking.