On February 7, 2017 Betsy DeVos was confirmed as U.S. Secretary of Education by a vote of 51-50 with Vice President Mike Pence breaking the tie vote. She made history because she was the first Cabinet nominee to be confirmed in this way. The question now is whether this contentious and controversial minister will make history by ensuring implementation of her objectives of school choice, charter schools, and vouchers, or as her critics argue, be the ideological advocate of anti-public education by undermining the traditional public school system? Whatever the answer, it is not coincidental that education is a major political issue in Britain as in the US. In both countries, a host of problems on the issue confront the administrations, the role of government, the issue of funding student loans which inevitably require increased taxes, the nature of the core curriculum. If the main controversy in the U.S. is over charter schools, the schools that are public funded and independently...(Read Full Article)