While we’re generally in favor of school choice initiatives, we need to navigate carefully. We continue to watch how the strings are attached to school choice funding. Democrats eye forcing private schools to accept LGBT students through school choice.
In States’ Private-School Vouchers, Few Safeguards Against Discrimination
How far can private schools that take taxpayer-funded vouchers go in selecting students without running afoul of civil rights and antidiscrimination laws?
The answer is complicated—and less than reassuring to those concerned about the rights of students of color, LGBT students, and children with disabilities.
And it’s a question supercharged now by the Trump administration’s strong advocacy for expanding school choice and U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ opaque stance on the issue, especially in recent testimony before members of Congress.
This tension took center stage in a recent congressional hearing on Trump’s proposed education budget—which includes $250 million in competitive grants to fund vouchers, and to study their effects—as Democrats pushed DeVos to say whether she would prohibit federally funded vouchers from going to private schools that don’t admit certain groups of students….
Continue reading: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/06/07/in-states-private-school-vouchers-few-safeguards-against.html