The November election and the focus of news reporting on President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees have made invisible some of the important challenges for children and their public schools. Those of us concerned about the nation’s roughly 90,000 public schools must, of course, pay attention to Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, and we must come to understand how her beliefs and experience are likely to affect the Department of Education and the schools across America’s neighborhoods.
But anybody who believes that the DeVos-Trump plan for a $20 billion block grant program to expand vouchers and charters will solve the primary challenges for public schools is dreaming. School teachers, social workers and counselors must help children cope with their life circumstances in order that students can learn. Public schools must be equipped to address the needs of the children who walk trough their doors...