A freshman Republican lawmaker on Tuesday compared public schools to a sandwich topping.
Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) said that parents should be able to select what taxpayer-funded school their children attend because he has the freedom to choose from different kinds of condiments when shopping.
“I can go down to my overpriced Capitol Hill grocery this afternoon and choose among about six different types of mayonnaise,” Kennedy said. “How come I can’t do that for my kid and school?” he rhetorically asked Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.
Kennedy made the remarks at a Senate appropriations subcommittee hearing on the Department of Education budget. He was admonished shortly after by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who characterized the analogy as far too flippant for public school policy.
“Education is not mayonnaise, and frankly the day that we start treating the education of our children like we do the marketing of a condiment is the day that we’ve given up on our kids,” Murphy stated.
Sen. Murphy then said the mayonnaise metaphor was appropriate, but only for touching on concerns about DeVos’ plans, which include a 13 percent or $9 billion reduction in the Department of Education Budget.
More than $1 billion of that money would then go toward school choice and voucher programs—some of which would be overseen by for-profit education companies that have been caught cutting corners to boost bottom lines.
Murphy cited New York Times reporting on one of those enterprises that DeVos herself had invested in, K12 Inc., and compared her plan to the deregulatory push that led to the subprime mortgage crisis last decade.
“Does your proposal require any of these companies to disclose their profits? Will it cap the salaries of these CEOs?” Murphy asked DeVos. “What specific protections will be in your proposal, in your program to make sure that taxpayer dollars don’t just end up enriching the pockets of the folks that own these companies?”
“If students are achieving and parents are making those choices on behalf of their children, I think those are better measures to be oriented around,” DeVos responded.
“Your question [sic] is: there will be no protections for taxpayer dollars,” Murphy replied.
