[Special] Betsy DeVos, Trump's Nominee for Secretary of Education

Elizabeth "Betsy" DeVos, Trump's pick to run the Education Department, made headlines for suggesting students need guns to defend against possible concerns over...not terrorists, not sexual predators, not crazed psychopaths, but bear attacks, had some other deeply troubling aspects of her performance during her Senate hearing. Like Dr. Ben Carson, she has zero knowledge, experience, or qualifications to lead the department she will likely lead. Lest history believe that this should fall all on Trump (and bear responsibility he should), let it be remembered that Republicans are the ones who will push her through. In the future, when the Trump presidency inevitably falls apart due to corruption and ethical violations, and his popularity plunges below 30%, Republicans will try to distance themselves, but it will be up to us, the people, to force them to bear the cross for their "sins" as well.

Information about Ms. DeVos below the jump.

• Washington Post: Betsy DeVos, Trump’s Education Pick, Lauded as Bold Reformer, Called Unfit for Job by Emma Brown, Danielle Douglas-Gabriel and Moriah Balingit (January 17, 2017)

DeVos told skeptical senators that she looked forward to working with them to improve the nation’s schools. But she sidestepped several issues important to Democrats and their allies, declining to take a position on whether guns belong in schools or to commit to upholding the Obama administration’s aggressive approach to handling sexual assault on college campuses, and she called Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (D-Vt.) ideas about free college “interesting.”

A Michigan billionaire, DeVos has lobbied for decades to expand charter schools and taxpayer-funded vouchers for private and religious schools, but she has no professional experience in public schools, never attended public schools or sent her own children to public schools. She also has not held public office.

DeVos’s inexperience in the realm of public education appeared at times to be a liability. During rapid-fire questioning by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), she seemed to demonstrate a lack of understanding of one of education’s major federal civil rights laws, which requires states that take federal funding to provide children with disabilities the services they need to benefit from a public education.

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DeVos said states should decide whether schools should be required to meet those special-education requirements.

“So some states might be good to kids with disabilities, and other states might not be so good, and then what, people can just move around the country if they don’t like how their kids are being treated?” Kaine said.

When Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) — who has a son with a disability — challenged DeVos to explain whether she understood that the law was a federal civil rights law, DeVos said she “may have confused it.”

DeVos also declined to say whether she believes that all schools receiving taxpayer funding — public, public charter, or private — should be held accountable to the same performance standards. She also declined to say whether such schools should be required to report suspensions and expulsions, and incidents of bullying and harassment, to the federal government.

• The Intercept: Trump Education Nominee Betsy DeVos Lied to the Senate by Jeremy Scahill (January 18, 2017)

DeVos is married to Richard DeVos, the heir to the Amway Corporation fortune. She is also the sister of Blackwater founder Erik Prince, who is secretly advising the Trump team on intelligence matters, as The Intercept reported Tuesday. The Prince and DeVos families’ merger through marriage was reminiscent of the monarchies of old Europe, and since the 1980s they have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into Republican campaign coffers and the war chests of far-right religious organizations, at least one of which — the Family Research Council — has been designated an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

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Newly elected Democratic Sen. Margaret Hassan pressed DeVos on these claims. She asked DeVos directly if she was on the board of her mother’s foundation during the period in which large donations were made to Focus on the Family. DeVos said that she was not on the foundation’s board.


When I heard that, I pulled up the 990 tax documents of the Prince Foundation, which I investigated for my book “Blackwater.” Betsy DeVos was clearly listed as a vice president of the foundation’s board, along with her brother Erik, for many years, at least until 2014. DeVos was a vice president during the precise period Hassan was referring to.

• New York Times: Nominee Betsy DeVos’s Knowledge of Education Basics Is Open to Criticism by Kate Zernike (January 18, 2017)

But her confirmation hearing that night opened her up to new criticism: that her long battle for school choice, controversial as it has been, is the sum total of her experience and understanding of education policy. In questioning by senators, she seemed either unaware or unsupportive of the longstanding policies and functions of the department she is in line to lead, from special education rules to the policing of for-profit universities.

Ms. DeVos admitted that she might have been “confused” when she appeared not to know that the broad statute that has governed special education for more than four decades is federal law.

A billionaire investor, education philanthropist and Michigan Republican activist, Ms. DeVos acknowledged that she has no personal experience with student loans — the federal government is the largest provider — and said she would have to “review” the department’s policies that try to prevent fraud by for-profit colleges.

She appeared blank on basic education terms. Asked how school performance should be assessed, she did not know the difference between growth, which measures how much students have learned over a given period, and proficiency, which measures how many students reach a targeted score.

Ms. DeVos even became something of an internet punch line when she suggested that some school officials should be allowed to carry guns on the premises to defend against grizzly bears.

• Washington Post: In Senate Hearing, DeVos Stoked Activists’ Fears that She Will Ignore Education Civil Rights by Emma Brown, Moriah Balingit and Nick Anderson (January 18, 2017)

“She was very clearly making no commitment to enforcing federal laws, and that’s disqualifying. That’s an unwillingness to do the job she has applied for,” said Liz King of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of more than 200 groups. The Leadership Conference is urging senators to reject DeVos, the first time the organization has objected to an education secretary nominee.

Through what she said and didn’t say about civil rights Tuesday, DeVos further alienated Democrats who were already skeptical of her fitness for the job. Republicans, however — who have praised DeVos’s willingness to shrink the federal footprint in education and take on teachers unions — showed no signs of withdrawing their support, meaning it appears DeVos almost certainly will be confirmed.

“I think she would be an excellent secretary of education,” Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said at the hearing.

Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) said Wednesday that nothing about the hearing changed his positive impression of DeVos. “She seemed pretty knowledgeable,” Isakson said.