In Pence, Trump finds school choice advocate
by Stephanie Wang and Chelsea Schneider
IndyStar
November 26, 2016
As governor, Mike Pence strongly advocated for education reforms, overseeing a vast expansion of the state’s private school voucher program and a boost in funding for charter schools.
Now as the incoming vice president, Pence has the chance to promote those same policies on the national stage.
And his boss is on board.
Consider this: Donald Trump has hinged his education plans on a $20 billion federal voucher program that would allow low-income families to send their children to the public or private school of their choosing. Details on how the program would work and how it would be funded are few. But Trump has pledged to be “the nation’s biggest cheerleader for school choice.”
With Pence as his No. 2 and Betsy DeVos, a Michigan philanthropist and staunch voucher advocate, set to head the U.S. Department of Education, school choice policies that have come to define Indiana’s educational landscape could gain an unprecedented prominence on the federal level.
While the administration of President Barack Obama has supported the expansion of charter schools nationwide, educators expect the Trump-Pence administration to provide a bully pulpit for national discussions on school choice.
They point to Pence’s record in which he pushed for laws to ease the ability for families to use taxpayer funds to pay for private schools and for charter schools to receive a $500 per student grant on top of their regular funding.
[…]
Jeanne Allen, founder of The Center for Education Reform, called Trump and Pence “unabashed school choice supporters.”
“Opportunity scholarships or vouchers, like those in D.C. and also in Indiana, will be more likely to thrive and grow with people in office who are willing to buck the status quo,” Allen said.
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