Donald Trump, a self-described billionaire, wants billionaire heiress Betsy DeVos to take over the Department of Education. These two ultra-rich people have never attended public schools. Nor have they sent their kids to them. Yet they will likely accelerate the bipartisan dismantling of public education as we know it.

Private foundations, billionaires and Wall Street hedge fund managers have funneled billions of dollars either directly into the education system or the political process to influence policy. These groups are often staunch advocates of pro-market policies such as charter schools and school vouchers, which allows parents to send their kids to private schools using public money. DeVos has been described as “the four-star general of the voucher movement”.



If DeVos’s nomination is approved, she will speed along the erosion of public education, which has been going on for some time. As I explain in my recent book, Schools on Trial, both the Obama and Bush administrations adopted a market-based approach. This was marked by privatization, austerity measures, expansion of privately managed charter schools, high-stakes standardized testing, school closures, value-added teacher evaluations and attacks on teachers unions. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and Race to the Top program in 2009 were rooted in this ideology.



Over the past two decades, as members of the ultra-wealthy rightwing DeVos family, Betsy and her husband, Dick, have been discreetly using their immense fortune to underwrite many of the major local and state crusades to privatize public education.



They helped pass Michigan’s first charter school law, pushed a failed Michigan school voucher referendum, helped get hundreds of pro-voucher and charter candidates for public office elected, proliferated charters, weakened teachers unions by advocating for right-to-work legislation in Michigan and warded off a proposed Detroit charter oversight commission in a state where 80% are run for profit with minimal accountability.



There are several flaws with vouchers. Their logic is based on empowering the individual over the state, rather than making systemic changes to funding, curriculum, assessment and teaching to achieve a high-quality, humane and equitable public system for all. Vouchers also siphon funds away from a cash-starved public system.



What’s more, studies have shown that school choice experiments in Chile and Sweden exacerbated existing inequalities. If we are to improve educational outcomes for all children, decades of research show that we must address the miserable social and economic conditions that profoundly affect schools: poverty, homelessness, inadequate healthcare, unsafe drinking water, food insecurity and gun violence. Reformers such as DeVos are not keen on the state redistributing their wealth to cure those ills.



On the campaign trail, Trump unveiled a $20bn school choice grant initiative so that poor children can attend any school of their family’s liking including charter and private schools. This served as the centerpiece of his plot to blow up the “government-run education monopoly”. Nominating DeVos shows that he’s committed to accomplishing this. In cities like New Orleans with only charter schools in operation, much of their scheme has been pulled off.



Obama’s Race to the Top competition incentivized states to open up more charters. Indeed, that was a central plank of former secretary Arne Duncan’s legacy when he was CEO of Chicago public schools. In the past decade, Journey for Justice has found that hundreds of public schools have been shuttered in black and Latino communities by Democratic politicians and charters have often taken their place.

The problem with this is that many charters are deeply segregated, push out low-performing and misbehaving students, and have been accused of “financial fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement” totaling more than $200m in a single 12-month span. Moreover, the Obama administration preserved and expanded Washington DC’s private school voucher program, which was originally launched by former president George W Bush.



DeVos will find many allies across the aisle in Washington, from Senator Cory Booker (who served on the board of the Alliance for School Choice, of which she was chairman) to the Center for American Progress to Democrats for Education Reform. At least she is forthright about gutting public education, as she wrote in an editorial urging to abolish and replace Detroit’s public schools with a free-market system, whereas Democrats hide behind the guise of “civil rights” and “educational opportunity”.



How should public education supporters respond? First, teachers unions must adopt what scholar Lois Weiner calls “social movement unionism”, in which members build coalitions for educational, racial, economic and social justice. It is the only way we will able to expose the corporate school reform agenda, fend off attacks on multiple fronts and organize for progressive victories. Otherwise, the unions will be crushed. We need to employ the tactics of the Chicago Teachers Union and engage in direct action such as strikes and walkouts.



Additionally, progressives need to collaborate on a platform that we can rally the public behind. Some of the items should include: a “New Deal” for public education: a multibillion-dollar investment into working-class communities; creating thousands of community schools which offer a whole child pedagogical approach and provide wrap-around services; end to high-stakes testing, abolition of corporal punishment and implementing restorative justice.



There is little public appetite for neighborhood schools to be sold off and privatized. See the referendum victories in Massachusetts and Georgia (against charter expansion) and California (extension of tax hikes on the rich to fund education), the Movement for Black Lives and NAACP demanding a moratorium on public school closures and charter expansion, the thousands of parents who have opted their children out of tests and protests against corporate reforms.

Unfortunately, the Obama years sowed the seeds for DeVos to finish the task. Without well-organized resistance, it will happen.