With the official inauguration of President Trump on January 20th, many people wonder what a Trump presidency has in store for them.

As students, the Education Secretary is one cabinet pick that will affect all high school students at Rocky. Donald Trump nominated Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary. DeVos is a billionaire philanthropist who sits on many nonprofit boards including one called Foundation for Excellence in Education.

Betsy DeVos’ foremost proposal is to expand the number of K-12 charter and private schools. A proposed $20 billion bill backs this expansion to expand private and charter schools.

The idea is to bring capitalist free market economics to the school system.“If a school is not meeting their needs, most often parents are going to vote with their feet and go somewhere else,” said Betsy.

She also proposes issuing vouchers to students who can’t afford to attend private school to get low income families into better schools.

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In 2014, the total tax payer expense per student for primary and secondary education in Colorado was $8,985, according to the  U.S. Census Bureau Annual Survey of School Systems. The argument from DeVos and private/charter school voucher advocates is that this tax money money should be attached to the students and given to the school that students choose, not the one closest to them or the one in their neighborhood.

“I don’t think [an increase in charter schools] will [affect Rocky],” said principal Craig Woodall. He emphasised that DeVos’ policies are aimed to “affect struggling schools” rather than higher performing schools like Rocky.

DeVos also claims she is against the Common Core standards, which  are, “…a set of high-quality academic standards in mathematics and English language arts/literacy (ELA). These learning goals outline what a student should know and be able to do at the end of each grade,” according to the corestandards.org.

Betsy DeVos was confirmed on Tuesday February 7th with a tie breaking vote from Vice President Mike Pence. The hypothetical  pros and cons of this confirmation are numerous, but only time will tell how Devos will affect the lives of the American student.