An Open Letter to Betsy DeVos
Dear Betsy DeVos,
My name is Chloe Directo and I am a 9th grader at Summit Shasta Public School. In my English class, we have been completing a project about wars and if the United States should intervene with an international conflict. We should not fight in international conflicts because the money that is being put into the military for war should be put into education for college students and low-income schools. People, especially college students, are not getting the education they need because they do not have the money needed to pay the tuition. This is causing an increase in college student dropouts because of their financial issues. There are also school funding issues in low-income communities.
My research has made me see that money should not be put all into war, but into education. Having more money put into education is important because there are people all over the world who struggle to access higher education. The money is not available for them and they cannot afford to get the education. A few of my family members have undergone a situation where they did not have enough money to get a good education and were struggling to maintain it. My mom and her sisters struggled to maintain a good education in college. It took my mom nine years to graduate college at SF State, when it should have only took four years to graduate. My mom and her sisters had just moved from the Philippines with their mom, and as soon as they got here, my mom and her siblings had to get a job because they did not have much money. This caused my mom to graduate college late. She was not able to complete college in time because of the job she had to get. she had to work a majority of the day, which left her little time for her to do work and take the classes. It is not just my family. According to “Student Money Problems Affect Performance” by The World University Rankings, studies have shown that students who have financial issues are doing worse academically. It states that “Students who also had part-time jobs were more likely to think that financial problems were affecting their academic work, with proportions rising to more than 60 per cent for those working 11 or more hours per week, against 49 per cent for those with no part-time job.” Not only does the finance cause college students to drop out, but it also causes them to become stressed in school. The stress from the having to worry about their finance is affecting their academic performance.
Money should also be put into schools in low-income communities. This money will be used for getting the materials needed to teach the students and make it affordable for the low-income families. According to the article “Society Benefits When We Spend More on Education” by Linda Darling-Hammond, “A recent study of school funding reforms over the last 40 years or so shows just how much of a difference money can make: For low-income students who spent all 12 years of school in districts that increased their spending by 20 percent as a result of court-ordered reforms, graduation rates rose by 23 percentage points and adult poverty rates fell by 20 percentage points.” The fact that “graduation rates rose by 23 percentage points and adult poverty rates fell by 20 percentage points”, it proves that putting more money into is beneficial. It shows that putting a greater amount of money in students will benefit them and their education, allowing them to graduate.
All in all, I hope that you will put more money into the education departments. This will make a difference because it will expand the mind of humans and how they think by allowing them to gain knowledge from education. Thank you for taking my letter into consideration and I hope to see better education.
Sincerely,
Chloe Directo
