Trump Shows Commitment to Schools With DeVos Pick

Clarence V. McKee
BlakPac Blogger

How ironic!

Blacks gave Barack Obama and the Democrats over 90 percent of their vote in 2008 and 2012 and got nothing in return to assist the plight of children trapped in inferior inner city schools. Thanks to BlakPAC, Donald Trump got eight percent of the black vote and has already acted on his commitment to improve educational opportunities for those children — even though most of their parents probably supported Clinton!
Throughout the presidential campaign, Trump made bringing school choice to inner city parents a key part of his urban agenda. Speaking at a charter school in Cleveland, Ohio which serves mostly poor black children, he said that he was "proposing a plan to provide school choice to every disadvantaged student in America."
Trump’s plan would direct $20 billion in federal education spending to school choice policies that would give students and their families the option of attending traditional public schools, public charter or magnet schools, or even private schools. His message: "As your president, I will be the nation’s biggest cheerleader for school choice."

Within days of his election, Trump made good on his promise by naming school choice advocate Betsy DeVos to be secretary of education. DeVos, like Trump, believes that parents should have the ability to choose the best schools for their children, whether traditional public, charter, or private schools.
That’s music to the ears of inner city and poor parents of all ethnic backgrounds.
By naming DeVos, Trump honored his commitment to improve inner city education right out of the gate. He has done more in a few weeks to improve the quality of education for low income children than Obama and Democrats have in decades.

They apparently care more about pleasing teachers’ unions than the plight of poor inner city kids.
Speaking of teachers’ unions, guess how they reacted to Trump’s appointment — certainly not as happy warriors!

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA), the unions that have done so much to provide us with high quality inner city schools — just kidding of course — were apoplectic over the DeVos appointment. AFT president Randi Weingarten called DeVos "the most ideological, anti-public education nominee put forward since President Carter created a Cabinet-level Department of Education." Not to be out done, NEA president Lily Eskelsen García said DeVos has "lobbied for failed schemes, like vouchers — which take away funding and local control from our public schools — to fund private schools at taxpayers’ expense."

Thankfully, these negative voices against greater educational opportunities for minority children — a unique form of liberal racism  — will not prevail.  Beyond the group think bubble of progressive liberalism, in the real world, Trump’s support of school choice and appointment of DeVos has many supporters.

Jeb Bush, who fought Trump bitterly during the GOP primaries, an education trailblazers in his own right, said that DeVos was "an outstanding pick" and that that her "allegiance is to families, particularly those struggling at the bottom of the economic ladder, not to an outdated public education model that has failed them from one generation to the next."

Bush, DeVos supporters, and conservatives throughout the country, will appreciate and most likely applaud the comments of incoming Florida House Speaker Rep. Richard Corcoran.
Commenting on the NEA’s Florida counterpart, the Florida Education Association (FEA), Corcoran called it "downright evil" for its continued legal fight against Florida’s tax credit scholarship program that provides low income families corporate-funded vouchers to attend private schools.
Adding a very refreshing and candid assessment of the group, he said the union was "attempting to destroy the lives of almost 100,000 children, mostly minority, and most of them poor" later saying to reporters the union actions were "disgusting" and "repugnant."
Cheers to the new speaker of the Florida House!
Corcoran, Bush and Trump are not the only ones supporting charter schools and choice for inner city parents.
In May, I wrote in this space how BlakPAC and over 100 black ministers in Florida demonstrated at the state capital in Tallahassee urging the Florida NAACP to drop the lawsuit with the Florida teachers union — the same group Corcoran attacked — challenging the above-mentioned state tax credit program.
I quoted black newspaper and radio station owner R.B. Holmes, who said the NAACP was "on the wrong side of history."
The ministers weren’t alone.
As I wrote then, "In January “nearly 11,000 private-school students, program supporters, school choice advocacy groups, and religious leaders went to Tallahassee in an over 240 bus convoy to ask the teachers union to drop its lawsuit. They argued that vouchers under the program were the only way for many families to escape under-performing schools."
I concluded saying that "Donald Trump should make it clear he stands with Florida’s black ministers on this important issue . . . "
By appointing DeVos, he not only has made it clear that he stands with those black ministers — and Corcoran — but also with school choice advocates throughout the nation — including many in black America.