The Significance of Betsy DeVos's Speech in Baltimore

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was ushered off stage at the University of Baltimore’s fall commencement Monday after dozens of students, faculty, and parents staged a protest against her keynote address. With their backs turned as DeVos spoke, some raised their fists in opposition and held signs reading “#Not My Commencement Speaker.”

DeVos’s visit comes amid growing concern over the future of Baltimore City Schools. Declining enrollment has created a $130 million budget deficit, prompting school officials to propose cutting 1,000 jobs.

A largely averted the crisis. But DeVos protesters, such as the professor and public-school parent Steven Leyva, say the education secretary’s support for school-choice models such as vouchers and charter schools would only make a tenuous situation worse. Charter schools are privately run but publicly funded, typically with little or no government oversight. Critics argue that charters and vouchers—which — from public education, and in some