American Association of School Administrators, January, 2018
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos insists that school choice is “the new civil rights issue of our time.” Choice, she contends, resolves one or more (generally unspecified) types of discrimination by empowering individual parents — a sentiment expressed by many choice advocates.
These advocates were not at all happy, then, to hear American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten criticize voucher approaches as undermining civil rights. “Make no mistake,” Weingarten said in July, “this use of privatization, coupled with disinvestment, are only slightly more polite cousins of segregation.“
Weingarten cited post-Brown history — including a 1964 Supreme Court case, Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County — documenting the use of a separate, private school option by segregationists to avoid public school desegregation orders.