Beware of School Choice in Wyoming - A billionaire is making her rounds across the state

A billionaire is making her rounds across the state to diminish the merit of public schools and introduce charters


JACKSON HOLE, WY – Right-wing billionaires like the Koch Brothers have been pushing “school choice” for years. The movement seeks to defund and dismantle traditional public education and replace it with a model that, in some combination, relies on charter schools, vouchers, religious schools, homeschooling, and other decentralized, mainly private institutions to educate our youth.

Betsy DeVos, a right-wing billionaire and the U.S. Secretary of Education, and Foster Friess, a right-wing billionaire running a strong campaign for Wyoming governor—are both staunch school choice proponents. That has perhaps emboldened another right-wing billionaire to introduce the movement to the Cowboy State.

Susan Gore, heiress to the vast Gore-Tex fortune, is the founder of the Wyoming Liberty Group. The think tank promotes policies to defund and otherwise break down public services and infrastructure in Wyoming, notably schools and education. It’s no coincidence that the decade-old organization’s existence has overlapped with a sharp rightward shift in state politics.

On Tuesday, the WLG launched the first installment of a seven-part event series called “Parents Unite!” It was the public debut of the school choice movement in Wyoming. Speaking to an audience at the Cheyenne public library (and livestreamed on Facebook), Gore explained that “Parents Unite!” is the WLG’s way of offering institutional support and resources for Wyoming parents who want to advocate for school choice—unsurprisingly, the billionaire-backed think tank wants to put parents’ faces and voices at the front of the fight.

Read more: http://planetjh.com/2018/07/03/beware-of-school-choice-in-wyoming/