The Nov. 24 front-page article “DeVos a top backer of ‘school choice’” made it clear that President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of education is a devotee of the misguided notion that simply by giving people a choice of schools, their children will magically do better. Just as there is no geographic cure for people with mental disorders, we can’t fix students’ poor academic performance by moving them to another school. The root cause of poor performance in school is poverty. If nothing else, the political climate has driven home the point that to win elections and bolster support, politicians need bogeymen to distract voters from seeing candidates’ own faults. Until the underlying societal and economic issues are resolved, poverty will continue to drive poor academic performance.

Source: Washington Post November 28, 2016 00:04 UTC