A few weeks ago I wrote a blog expressing my exasperation with my children’s public school education and my attraction to school vouchers. To my surprise, United States Education Secretary Betsy DeVos spoke about that blog in a speech, and her staff later invited me to the Department of Education (DOE) to meet and talk about schools. It was an on-the-record discussion, and I wrote about it too.
Then last Wednesday, I had an exclusive, eye-opening conversation with the secretary.
DeVos called me on my cell phone from a restricted line at precisely 10:00 a.m. To help me relax and talk to her straight, I decided to stay in bed and take the call wearing my fuzzy pajamas with my night scarf still on. (Whatever works, right?)
The call was arranged just 24 hours earlier, so overnight I had reached out to a core group of family and friends to ask them to pray for me to have wisdom and to also send me questions for her. It was my duty, I felt, to voice the needs of my community—low- and middle-income African-American families—to the most powerful person in public education.
What surprised me was that DeVos seemed to have called not to talk, but to listen. Our 30-minute call turned into an hour, and she didn’t seem to mind. She was gracious, granting me on-the-record permission to blog about our conversation even though I admitted that I hadn’t taken many notes or recorded the phone call.
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Here’s a paraphrasing of part of our discussion:
DeVos: Do you think empowering parents to choose what schools to send their children to would change the dynamics of schooling?
Me: Yes. Schools need to work for students, not the other way around. That said, there must be some safeguards in place to ensure that the school choices are high quality, otherwise we’ll have a situation like in Detroit where most of the school choices are bad.