BETSY DEVOS
Secretary of Education
2017-2021
MEET BETSY DEVOS, THE POLARIZING CHARTER-SCHOOL ADVOCATE TRUMP HAS TAPPED AS EDUCATION SECRETARY
The Michigan Democratic Party released a statement calling DeVos a "dangerous and ill-advised pick" and an "anti-public education activist," accusing her of attacking the state's public school system and its teachers for the sake of profits of investors in charter schools.
"Here is someone, in Betsy DeVos, who has made it her life's work to channel her family's massive wealth toward destroying Michigan's public education system," the party said in a statement.
November 25, 2016
BETSY DEVOS, TRUMP’S EDUCATION PICK, HAS STEERED MONEY FROM PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, called Ms. DeVos “the most ideological, anti-public education nominee” since the secretary of education was elevated to the cabinet level four decades ago.
Editors’ Picks
November 23, 2016
BETSY DEVOS, BILLIONAIRE PHILANTHROPIST, PICKED AS TRUMP EDUCATION SECRETARY
November 23, 2016
DeVos donated funds to Bush and Carly Fiorina during the Republican primary contest before endorsing Senator Marco Rubio. Like Haley, she expressed reservations about Trump. In March, she told the Washington Examiner that she considered him an “interloper” who “does not represent the Republican party”. In July she told the Associated Press: “A lot of the things he has said are very off-putting and concerning.”
TRUMP'S EDUCATION PICK SAYS REFORM CAN 'ADVANCE GOD'S KINGDOM'
December 2, 2016
School choice, they say, leads to “greater Kingdom gain.” The two also lament that public schools have “displaced” the Church as the center of communities, and they cite school choice as a way to reverse that troubling trend.
STUDENTS BOO BETSY DEVOS AS COMMENCEMENT SPEAKER AT HISTORICALLY BLACK UNIVERSITY
May 10, 2017
School leaders at the front of the room and some faculty applauded as he introduced DeVos to give her an honorary doctorate. But many students booed. When she began speaking, thanking Jackson, the room erupted with shouts. DeVos had to raise her voice as she thanked the moms attending the ceremony.
About half of the 380 graduates turned their backs on her.
DEVOS RESCINDS 72 GUIDANCE DOCUMENTS OUTLINING RIGHTS FOR DISABLED STUDENTS
October 21, 2017
This is not the first time DeVos has rolled back Education Department guidance, moves that have raised the ire of civil rights groups. The secretary in February signed off on Trump’s rescinding of guidance that directed schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms in accordance with their gender identity, saying that those matters should be left up to state and local school officials. In September, she scrapped rules that outlined how schools should investigate allegations of sexual assault, arguing that the Obama-era guidance did not sufficiently take into account the rights of the accused.
Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (D-Va.) called the elimination of the special education guidance “the latest in a series of disturbing actions taken by the Trump Administration to undermine civil rights for vulnerable Americans.”
BETSY DEVOS ACCIDENTALLY PROMOTES STUDY SHOWING TEACHERS FEEL DISRESPECTED BY HER
"Ironically, DeVos' agenda to get rid of unions and defund public education goes in the opposite direction of what she claimed to support," AFT President Randi Weingarten said in a statement to Shareblue Media. "That's why the same report she cited showed that 86 percent of teacher surveyed felt disrespected by DeVos and 95 percent of educators said they needed strong unions. So if we really do agree on this, Id ask her to spend more time listening to what teachers say they need to be successful."
January 17, 2018
9 CONTROVERSIAL - AND HIGHLY REVEALING - THINGS BETSY DEVOS HAS SAID
"I will refer back to Sen. [Mike] Enzi and the school he was talking about in Wyoming. I think probably there, I would imagine that there is probably a gun in the schools to protect from potential grizzlies."
March 12, 2018
EDUCATION SECRETARY BETSY DEVOS STUMBLES DURING POINTED ‘60 MINUTES’ INTERVIEW
March 12, 2018
These are just some of the things that DeVos said — or couldn’t answer — during the interview:
She couldn’t say whether the number of false accusations of sexual assault on school campuses is lower than the number of actual rapes or assaults.
Arming teachers “should be an option” for states and communities, she said, even though she couldn’t “ever imagine” her first-grade teacher, Mrs. Zorhoff, having had a gun.
“We have invested billions and billions and billions of dollars from the federal level, and we have seen zero results,” DeVos said — a statement Stahl challenged.
“I hesitate to talk about all schools in general because schools are made up of individual students attending them.”
In reference to the #MeToo movement, she said she experienced moments decades ago that “today would just be viewed as unacceptable.”
‘ASTOUNDING IGNORANCE OF THE LAW’: CIVIL RIGHTS GROUPS SLAM DEVOS FOR SAYING SCHOOLS CAN REPORT UNDOCUMENTED STUDENTS
“Let’s be clear: Any school that reports a child to ICE would violate the Constitution. The Supreme Court has made clear that every child in America has a right to a basic education, regardless of immigration status,” Lorella Praeli, the ACLU’s director of immigration policy and campaigns, said in a statement. “Secretary DeVos is once again wrong.”
May 23, 2018
DEVOS BLASTED AGAIN FOR PROPOSING CUTS TO THE SPECIAL OLYMPICS
March 27, 2019
One proposal that has repeatedly gotten attention from lawmakers is DeVos’ suggestion to cut funding from Special Olympic events at schools.
“We had to make some difficult decisions with this budget,” DeVos responded when asked about the proposal by Rep. Mark Pocan, a Wisconsin Democrat, who said that more than 270,000 children benefit from those programs.
DEVOS REVERSES COURSE ON SPECIAL OLYMPICS CUTS AFTER TRUMP ORDERS FUNDING
March 28, 2019
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos spent three days defending her plan to eliminate Special Olympics funding from next year’s budget.
But that didn’t stop her from quickly reversing herself shortly after her boss, President Donald Trump, publicly undermined her position on Thursday, telling reporters that he had “overridden” the proposed cut – though this is the third year in a row that DeVos had included it in her annual funding request to Congress.
DEVOS RESIGNS AS EDUCATION SECRETARY, SAYS, 'IMPRESSIONABLE CHILDREN ARE WATCHING'
January 7, 2021
For four years, DeVos has been one of Trump's steadiest allies in a Cabinet with revolving doors, but in a letter to the president, DeVos said she was tendering her resignation, effective Friday, because she had seen enough this week:
"We should be highlighting and celebrating your Administration's many accomplishments on behalf of the American people. Instead, we are left to clean up the mess caused by violent protesters overrunning the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to undermine the people's business."
BETSY DEVOS AND THE POLITICS OF FEAR: A NOT-SO-FOND FAREWELL TO TRUMP'S EDUCATION SECRETARY
Janaury 24, 2021
DeVos went on to show her utter lack of … well, everything having to do with her job. When interviewer Lesley Stahl asked her if she had visited any struggling public schools, DeVos flailed. "I have not," she began, "I have not — I have not intentionally visited schools that are underperforming. ... Maybe I should. Yes."
It wasn't just that she didn't know anything about schools, even in her home state of Michigan. She didn't even seem willing to learn, and she didn't improve with time. When the COVID pandemic threw American schools into utter confusion, DeVos shocked observers once again with her trademark combination of incompetence, ignorance and chilling apathy. When asked what her department would do to help coordinate an educational response to the pandemic, DeVos punted. It was not the job of her department, she said, to "collect and compile that research." Of course, that was precisely her job. As the original charter of the Education Department laid out, one of its primary responsibilities would be to improve schools "through federally supported research, evaluation, and sharing of information."
BETSY DEVOS VOWED TO CHANGE AMERICAN EDUCATION. FOR THE MOST PART, SHE DIDN’T.
December 2, 2020
Overall, DeVos didn’t accomplish much of her school choice agenda. Her hallmark “education freedom” campaign, which sought to create a national private school voucher program, didn’t come to fruition. Congress repeatedly killed that proposal, which in its latest iteration sought to allocate $5 billion toward tax credit scholarships for private school.
“If we fast-forward 10 years and look back at this period, we’re not going to see much,” said Dale Chu, a senior visiting fellow at the Fordham Institute, a right-leaning education think tank.
BETSY DEVOS IS GONE — BUT ‘DEVOSISM’ SURE ISN’T. LOOK AT WHAT FLORIDA, NEW HAMPSHIRE AND OTHER STATES ARE DOING.
“DeVosism” included an effort to literally redefine public education. DeVos and her allies, especially Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), publicly called for a definition that essentially said: If public dollars are used for any kind of schooling, that makes it public education — even if the public has no say in how a school operates.
February 5, 2021
HOW BETSY DEVOS’S AGENDA IS SPREADING ACROSS THE COUNTRY
February 9, 2021
Would states be ramping up these school privatization efforts had DeVos never set foot in the Department of Education? Probably. But her prominent leadership role and media persona raised public awareness of the well-funded and highly organized effort to privatize public schools and deepened political divisions over charter schools and voucher programs.
ERIK PRINCE, TRUMP ALLY, VIOLATED LIBYA ARMS EMBARGO, U.N. REPORT SAYS
February 24, 2021
Mr. Prince, a former Navy SEAL and the brother of Betsy DeVos, Mr. Trump’s education secretary, became a symbol of the excesses of privatized American military force when his Blackwater contractors killed 17 Iraqi civilians in 2007.