g********2 发帖数: 6571 | 6 DeVos served as chairwoman of the board of Alliance for School Choice[27]
She heads the All Children Matter PAC which she and her husband founded in
2003 to promote school vouchers, tax credits to businesses that give private
school scholarships, and candidates who support these causes.[28][29] Over
the years, DeVos and her husband have provided millions in funding for the
organization.[30]
Her other activities on behalf of public-school reform have included
membership on the boards of directors of the Advocates for School Choice,
the American Education Reform Council, and the Education Freedom Fund.[31]
She has chaired the boards of Choices for Children, and Great Lakes
Education Project (GLEP).[32] She has described GLEP as being "focused on
supporting candidates who share a commitment to the issue of meaningful
education reform," and CFC as being an "education reform watchdog
organization" that is "focused on raising public awareness as to the merits
of education reform."[18]
She has also been on the boards of the Acton Institute, the American Council
of Young Political Leaders, Compass Arts Board, and was finance co-chair of
the American Dream PAC.[33] According to a Florida publication, DeVos "
excels in her efforts as an ambassador for governors with interest in this
subject, like New Jersey's Chris Christie."[26]
DeVos said in the Spring 2013 issue of Philanthropy magazine that she was
more optimistic than ever about school choice, noting that within the
previous year, "the number of students in educational-choice programs grew
by about 40,000." She said that "the public's awareness that traditional
public schools are not succeeding" has "helped people become more open to
what were once considered really radical reforms—reforms like vouchers, tax
credits, and education savings accounts."[2]
She said that her involvement in the school-choice issue had increased
gradually. A visit to the Potter's House Christian School in Grand Rapids
had played a role, because the parents "were doing everything in their power
to have their kids in an environment that was safe, where they were
learning, and where the atmosphere was just electric with curiosity, with
love for one another." Since "paying tuition was a real sacrifice" for the
parents, DeVos and her husband "started supporting individual students at
the school, and that grew into a larger commitment."[2]
Later, she also started "a foundation that gave scholarships to low-income
families so that parents could decide where their kids would go to school."
But she and her husband realized that "while it was wonderful to help some
families through the scholarship fund, it was never going to fundamentally
address the real problem." It was this realization, she said, that drove
them to become involved in the movement for school choice.[2]
During the 1990s, she served on the boards of Children First America and the
American Education Reform Council, which sought to expand school choice
through vouchers and tax credits. She and her husband worked for the
successful passage of Michigan's first charter-school bill in 1993, and for
the unsuccessful effort in 2000 to amend Michigan's constitution to allow
tax-credit scholarships or vouchers. She described this loss as "really
tragic, because Michigan has so many families, particularly in our state's
large, urban school districts, who are desperate for better educational
options, and because our state constitution has some of the most restrictive
language limiting educational choice in the country." In response to that
defeat DeVos started a PAC, the Great Lakes Education Project, which
championed charter schools. DeVos's husband and John Walton then founded All
Children Matter, a political organization, which she chaired. Sometime
after that she and other members of that group formed the American
Federation for Children, a 501(c)(4). "Now that our efforts are better
organized," she said, "it's been working really, really well."[2]
Her biggest success with the American Federation for Children, she said, was
Florida, which, thanks to its tax-credit scholarship program, "has enjoyed
the nation's longest period of widespread educational choice," and thus has
over 50,000 students "attending the school of their family's choice." She
said that "Florida is the state we point to and say, 'If you do this well,
you won't have to spend a lot of energy protecting the programs you passed.
As your programs gain popularity, you can build and enhance them in a major
way.'" She also referred positively to recent developments in Louisiana and
Indiana.[2]
DeVos emphasized her view that "the only way that real education choice is
going to be successfully implemented is by making it a bipartisan or a non-
partisan issue." She lamented that this has usually not been the case by
saying, "What we've tried to do is engage with Democrats, to make it
politically safe for them to do what they know in their heart of hearts is
the right thing," she said. "Education should be non-partisan." She pointed
to "the growing interest in educational choice among Democratic leaders."[2]
She noted that it had been her idea for her husband to start a charter high
school. "He's a pilot. He flies everything-jets, helicopters, you name it...
.A few years ago, I asked him, 'Why don't you combine your love of flying
and your love of education? You could start an aviation school!' And that's
exactly what he did. He started the West Michigan Aviation Academy, a
charter high school located at the Gerald Ford Airport in Grand Rapids." She
said her overall goal was that "all parents, regardless of their zip code,
have had the opportunity to choose the best educational setting for their
children. And that all students have had the opportunity to fulfill their
God-given potential."[2]
DeVos and Joel Klein noted in a May 2013 op-ed that residents of Maine "are
now given information on school performance using easy-to-understand report
cards with the same A, B, C, D and F designations used in student grades."
This system, they argued, "truly motivates parents and the community to get
involved by simply taking information that education officials have had for
years and presenting it in a way that is more easily understood." Also, it
rewards schools "for taking students who are significantly behind and moving
them closer to grade level." They called for this system to be used
elsewhere, for it can "provide an early warning about which schools are
struggling, so that we can best target additional help and resources to
those that need them the most, while further providing structural changes
when persistent under-performance requires as much."[34]
In 2008, DeVos and her husband established The Dick & Betsy DeVos
Scholarship to support entering MA, MS, or MBA students at the Thunderbird
School of Global Management, particularly those from developing nations.[35]
The DeVoses have also established an annual scholarship, called the Betsy
and Dick DeVos Scholars for Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Scholarship
, which is awarded to students earning a BBA or combined BBA/MBA at
Northwood University.[36]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betsy_DeVos |