It seems like her history of discrimination against disabled students has been lost in the coverage of her numerous other flaws, but we can’t let this go undiscussed.

Devos’ recent 60 Minutes interview has been nearly universally panned as a disaster that revealed just how uninformed she is. She admitted that she had “not intentionally visited schools that are under-preforming” (one might assume that our country should be working especially hard to help such schools…), and she repeatedly failed to properly respond to evidence that charter schools are counter-productive to public school systems and student outcomes. When asked if public schools in Michigan, her home state where she has advocated charter schools for years, had improved, she replied “I don’t know…I can’t say overall that they have all gotten better”. The fact that she botched her response to that second point is actually rather surprising, since she has been an advocate for what she calls “school choice” for years. I didn’t expect a good answer, but I would have guessed that she would have at least mastered talking points to defend defunding public schools to fund charter schools. Charter schools are generally popular among Conservatives who want to privatize public education and who are glad that charter schools are non-union.

The Young Turks provided a good summary and commentary on the issue:

One of the key points TYT made is that charter schools get to pick their students. This often includes either intentionally or unintentionally leaving out students with disabilities. Students with disabilities are often more costly to teach. In public schools they are guaranteed access to special education programs, sometimes involving just being pulled out of one class or given extra help in that class if they have a learning disability in that one subject. However, for a for-profit school, it makes more sense to just leave out those students and avoid the costs of a special education program. In terms of less intentional discrimination, many charter schools require certain tests to be taken, and certain scores achieved, to be accepted to their schools. However, this testing often lacks the accommodations given to students with disabilities for standardized testing.

This NPR article does a wonderful job explaining more about what students with disabilities are not offered in charter schools: https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/12/04/567529625/school-voucher-programs-should-be-clear-about-disability-rights-report-says

Take, for example, a student with a Learning Disability in Written Expression, or a similar condition like Dyslexia. In a public school setting, they would be given targeted help in that subject, and likely accommodations like extra time on written assignments on tests, or the ability to use a computer with a spell-check feature. Charter schools are unlikely to provide these services, or accommodations on their admissions tests. A student with a specific learning disability will only under-preform in a single subject, and part of the diagnostic criteria is that their IQ must be average or higher — indicating that their struggles are not due to a more general issue. These students are not infrequently in honors of IB or AP classes, but may be multiple grade levels behind in the one subject they struggle with. Learning Disabilities also exist for Verbal Expression and Mathematics. Dyslexia, ADD, and ADHD are related conditions that similarly impact a relatively small subsection of a student’s performance, but may significantly impact test scores.

A student with a Writing Disability, for example, might preform several grade levels below expectations when forced to hand-write an essay on a test, but when allowed to type, might preform significantly higher than what is expected for their grade level. This is because typing mollifies many of the issues that people with Writing Disabilities have to deal with, like letter flipping, forgetting how to spell words, letter spacing, writing in a straight line, illegible handwriting, hand cramping, slow writing speed, and difficulty focusing while hand-writing. Their ability to get into a school could depend entirely on what accommodations they are offered, and charter schools are under no obligation to offer these accommodations. The fact that charter schools also leach funding from public schools tends to mean that special education programs at public schools become (more) underfunded. Charter schools are also often loath to provide accommodations for students with other disabilities, whether physical, mental, or psychological. There is certainly no equality of opportunity when it comes to charter schools.

Devos, beyond pushing for more charter schools, has also rolled back protections for disabled students during her time as Secretary of Education. So Devos, at best, doesn’t seem to care about how disabled people will be impacted by charter schools, either in terms of charter schools not providing proper accommodations or in terms of how they defund public schools. However, it is hard to see her rolling back of disability protections as anything other than malicious. So why would she do this? In my search for an answer, it has honestly been quite hard to find anything substantive. It does appear that this change makes it easier for schools to cut back on relevant programs. I’m sure that there will be well paying jobs waiting for Devos as soon as she leaves the administration. On the other hand, her motivation may be ideological as well, given her history.

In the midst of Devos’ most recent controversy, which is certainly worth the attention it has gotten, let’s be careful not to forget how her policies impact many of the least fortunate students in our public school systems.