We're talking about two very different premises, and how they result in entirely different educational approaches.
Premise 1: All human beings have equal worth and are equally deserving of autonomy, opportunity, power, and privilege.
Under this premise, the school system would exist to provide opportunity to all students. Each student would be entitled to the chance to pick a path and pursue it to the extent of their ability. The school system would exist for the uplift of all young humans, and one of our big challenges would be to get resources to all students, regardless of their socio-economic origins. That would include special resources for students with special needs as well as resources targeted for particular cultural and community settings.
For much of US history, this has been our stated premise, even if we have had a hard time working through the implications of that premise and living up to them.
Premise 2: Some human beings have more value than others, and are more deserving of autonomy, power, and privilege.
This premise takes us to a very different place. It envisions a society with various layers; some people are destined to be Betters, to live at the top, and others are destined to be Lessers, to serve as meat widgets or other specific functions in society. In fact, it argues, much of the discontent and difficulty in society comes from people trying to live outside their proper roles.
In that world, schools exist not for uplift, but for sorting, to help everyone find and settle happily into their proper place. Betters may learn arts and culture and what we think of as a broad liberal education. But future meat widgets need to learn marketable skills, job skills that will make them useful to their future corporate-boss Betters. Betters get privilege and power because they are entitled to it; Lessers must work and provide value (as determined by Betters) to "earn" every bit of privilege and power.
For Lessers, obedience and compliance are important. For the most extreme cases, children and women are automatically Lessers who are expected to comply and obey. Schools are supposed to reinforce that message, reminding students that they are under the sole and complete control of their parents and must never, ever question that control. It will be good practice for them when they enter the workforce.
Because individuals are of value, everything in life must be navigated on an individual basis. Every person should be "free" to take their proper place in society; to try to "help" them by lifting them above their station or providing them with privileges they haven't earned is wrong, a crime against God and nature, and will (some folks are sure) simply make those artificially uplifted person unhappy and dissatisfied (like all those women who pursued a career instead of taking their natural place as a home-staying baby-maker).
That emphasis on compliance and obedience also manifests in a belief that there is one true correct answer to all questions, and so education is about transmitting the Correct Answers. That helps teach compliance to an outside authority as well as locking in one natural order with everyone in their proper place.
When someone like Betsy DeVos argues for school choice as a way for each student to find their proper fit, they're talking about tiers of schools set up to handle the different proper natural tiers of society. Future meat widgets don't need to learn calculus or read Shakespeare. The DeVosian crowd definitely does not mean that there should be all sorts of different schools (like wacky lefty schools or Islamic academies), but just different layers of schools that teach the correct christianist truth appropriate to the place of that set of students in the social order.
For Betters, things go on much as always-- if you have wealth and privilege and power, that proves you deserve wealth and privilege and power, so carry on. For Lessers, the message is that you need to earn the right to even get by in your proper place.
Further complicating matters-- nobody believes that they are a Lesser. It's always Those People Over There.
None of this is new, but these days Betterism believers are enjoying plenty of power, and they are aggressively pursuing all the Lessers that they feel have snuck out of place. LGBTQ people should disappear. Women should get busy making babies. Young human future meat widgets should start working right now. Everyone ought to be properly worshipping the conservative christianist God. People from non-Caucasian countries should get to their proper place, which is Not Here. Everyone should stop invoking "civil rights" to move Lessers above their proper station. Tech world brogliarchs and other Betters should not have any restraints put on them. And schools should be telling students to always obey their parents in all things.
There's not really any point to arguing that this is all undemocratic-- these folks don't particularly believe that democracy is a good idea. And it's not always easy to talk through the issues with them because some of the words have different meanings; we can all say that every child should get the education they deserve or that is best suited to them, but we mean different things.
Nor are all school choice fans bettersists. I'm not even sure that some school choice fans really understand who they've teamed up with.
Betterists pose a real challenge to any sort of discussion or debate about education in this country, because they hold a fundamentally different view of the purpose of education, a profoundly different idea about how the country is supposed to work. I have met, personally and virtually, plenty of people I disagree with, but with whom I share some basic values. However, I don't see a bridge to the Betterists and their belief that some people deserve less than others. And I suspect that may be an education policy sticking point in this country for a few years to come.
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