Earlier this week, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos spoke at the Brookings Institution at an event marking the release of a report that ranks school districts based on how much school choice they offer families.

Summing up the speech, Erica Green notes that DeVos aruged “for an expansion of school choice programs, pointing to lagging test scores and a program championed by the Obama administration that funneled billions into low-performing schools but failed to produce better academic outcomes” and “made her case for choice policies that she said focused on the ‘individual child.’”

“Our nation’s commitment is to provide a quality education to every child to serve the greater public, common good,” Ms. DeVos said in her address. “Accordingly, we must shift the paradigm to think about education funding as investments made in individual children, not in institutions or buildings.”

In her remarks, DeVos pointed to Denver as an example of a school district that is not as choice-friendly as it appears, and to New Orleans as a better example of a district that makes a full menu of options available to families.

For more about Denver, please read “Denver Expands Choice and Charters,” in the Summer 2016 issue of Education Next.

For more about New Orleans, please read “Good News for New Orleans,” “Many Options in New Orleans Choice System,” and “The New Orleans OneApp,” in the Fall 2015 issue of Education Next.

— Education Next