Aaron Pallas of Teachers College, Columbia University, reviewed Betsy DeVos in The Hechinger Report.
In her testimony and in her written responses, he found her to be largely evasive and misleading. In the matter of graduation rates, her answer was simply untrue.
Although there were more bright spots in the relatively polished written testimony than in her awkward oral testimony, DeVos remained evasive, and did little to address fears that she is a thoughtless proponent of the privatization of American education.
If her actions in office parallel her responses to the Senate HELP Committee, we’re in for a rocky four years.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane – Where are we with senators (besides Collins and Murkowski) who may vote against BD confirmation? I have heard conflicting reports… Thanks.
So far, no defections from GOP 50
It is not the end of the world if she is confirmed…..Obama did not have the guts or sense to get rid of Gates and Duncan without dealing with the damage they had done…..DeVos could be in a lot of trouble quickly after confirmation….pressure from wealthy charter foundations/entrepreneurs…..and if Trump throws her out, he might talk the gop into eliminating or at least downgrading the existence of the department of education…..and then…
The DOE was started after the Civil War to provide information to states creating their own educational systems. Much later it became a cabinet position, and the DOE was charged with issues of equity and access to opportunity. At this time Title 1 was created to provide districts with extra support and funding for poor students. Bush and NCLB created the test and punish policies which the Obama administration expanded and “refined.” The DOE also oversees higher education and oversees the federal grants and loans. I think we still need someone to oversee issues of equity as our country has a long history of being inequitable, and we will still need someone to oversee higher education and ESSA. However, in my opinion, both Bush and Obama’s test and punish policies are an example of federal overreach.
The US Office of Education was created in 1867 to collect data and report it
It was eventually folded into the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare
The ED Department was created in 1980, when Carter was President
No one foresaw what Bush and Obama would do
With the charter school industry that’s favored by nominee for U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos bleeding vital funds from the public’s schools, the thoughtful person will ask: “Why are hedge fund people the main backers of the private charter school industry? After all, hedge funds are not known for a selfless interest in educating children.”
Well, the answer, of course, is MONEY.
For example, look at DeVos’ home state of Michigan: There are 1.5 million children attending public elementary and secondary schools and the state annually spends about $11,000 per student which adds up to pot of about $17 billion that private charter school operators have their eyes on. If these private operators succeed in getting what DeVos wants to give them — the power to run all the schools — these private profiteers could make almost $6 billion in profit just by firing veteran teachers and replacing them with low-paid inexperienced teachers, which is what the real objective of so-called “Value-Added” evaluations of veteran teachers is all about.
But wait! There’s more!
In fact, there are many more ways that big profits are being made every day right now by the private charter school industry. Here are just some:
The Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education has issued a warning that charter schools posed a risk to the Department of Education’s own goals. The report says: “Charter schools and their management organizations pose a potential risk to federal funds even as they threaten to fall short of meeting the goals” because of the financial fraud, the skimming of tax money into private pockets that is the reason why hedge funds are the main backers of charter schools.
The Washington State Supreme Court, the New York State Supreme Courts, and the National Labor Relations Board have ruled that charter schools are not public schools because they aren’t accountable to the public since they aren’t governed by publicly-elected boards and aren’t subdivisions of public government entities, in spite of the fact that some state laws enabling charter schools say they are government subdivisions. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A “PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL” because no charter school fulfills the basic public accountability requirement of being responsible to and directed by a school board that is elected by We the People. Charter schools are clearly private schools, owned and operated by private entities. Nevertheless, they get public tax money.
Even the staunchly pro-charter school Los Angeles Times (which acknowledges that its “reporting” on charter schools is paid for by a billionaire charter school advocate) complained in an editorial that “the only serious scrutiny that charter operators typically get is when they are issued their right to operate, and then five years later when they apply for renewal.” Without needed oversight of what charter schools are actually doing with the public’s tax dollars, hundreds of millions of tax money that is supposed to be spent on educating the public’s children is being siphoned away into private pockets.
Charter schools should (1) be required by law to be governed by school boards elected by the voters so that they are accountable to the public; (2) a charter school entity must legally be a subdivision of a publicly-elected governmental body; (3) charter schools should be required to file the same detailed public-domain audited annual financial reports under penalty of perjury that genuine public schools file; and, (4) anything a charter school buys with the public’s money should be the public’s property.
NO PUBLIC TAX MONEY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO GO TO CHARTER SCHOOLS THAT FAIL TO MEET THESE MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS OF ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE PUBLIC.
No public money should go to schools without democratically elected school boards. OUR taxes, OUR kids, OUR communities.
I think the author meant to say that there were more bright spots in the plagiarized written testimony that she copied from the Dept. of Education website.