Valerie Strauss has collected the most memorable, ridiculous, and disturbing things that Betsy DeVos said in her first year as Secretary of Education. She is the most unpopular member of ztrump’s cabinet, possibly because of her hostility to public schools, possibly because of her lack of qualifications, possibly because of her permanent supercilious sneer.
She made a big first impression at her confirmation hearings when she defended guns in schools to protect against possible intrusions by grizzly bears.
That was not funny.
But what was not funny was when she refused to say that she would act against schools that excluded students because they were black or LGBT.
Even worse than her words have been her actions, which gave preference to charter schools, voucher schools, and for-profit schools, which whittled or hacked away at the rights of students with disabilities, students defrauded by fake for-profit colleges, and transgender students.
DeVos is a proud reactionary, determined to destroy public schools and student rights.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Trivially interesting that an ad for Herzing “University” was in the middle of the WaPo story. Appropriate, actually.
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“Every option should be held accountable, but they should be directly accountable to parents and communities, not to Washington, D.C., bureaucrats.”
DeVos contradicts herself as she has done nothing to hold any of the privatized options accountable for their poor results or misuse of public funds. Her “free market” is a feeding frenzy of various schemes of dubious value with zero accountability.
Teachers have always been accountable to their students, parents, building administrators, school district and state in which they teach. With every lesson plan they execute, with student they teach, with every parent meeting they attend, with every progress report, test, quiz or curricula they write, they are accountable. None of these has anything to do with “the bureaucrats in Washington.” None of these has anything to do with standardized testing either. DeVos understands nothing about public education, nor is she interested in learning.
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DeVos is opposed to accountability for schools of choice
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I am NOT a DeVos fan but as to her qualifications: No Secretary of Education (save Bell under Reagan) had any college degree in Education. Bell had a PhD in Higher (college) Education.
Most have been Sociologists, Poly Sci, lawyers and business degree people. none have been teachers.
So, so far as I am concerned none have been qualified for the job.
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You don’t need to have a degree in education to be Secretary of Education.
Being a governor is a qualification because education is the single biggest item in the state’s budget.
Having no experience as a teacher, a principal, a superintendent, a legislator, a governor indicates that she has no knowledge whatever of public education, not even as a parent or PTA leader.
In addition she has devoted thirty years to trying to defund and undermine public schools, which enroll 90% of all American children.
I would say she is uniquely unqualified.
She is the opposite of qualified. Not just unqualified but anti-qualified and bereft of understanding, knowledge, or experience.
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She is the opposite of qualified: when the person in charge of Public Education wishes only to eliminate Public Education….
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I am with you basically. I still believe that Lamar Alexander, was pre-eminently qualified. He is an academician, and highly skilled in the arts of politics. He is a fine senator, as well.
You need not be a teacher to serve as SecEd. You do not have to have been a soldier to serve as the Secretary of Defense. Some of our finest SecDefs have never put on a uniform. (I work at the Pentagon). You need not be a farmer, to serve as the Secretary of Agriculture, and so on. The President has a great deal of latitude in selecting whom he wishes to serve as a cabinet secretary. And this is how it should be.
I encounter people on all sides of the political spectrum, who uniformly comment on the lack of qualifications that some (not all) of our previous SecEds have possessed. This is another reason to abolish the entire department!
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Lamar Alexander is a fine man but he is not an academician. He is a politician. I enjoyed working for him as his Asst Secretary in charge of research. I like him. He is about 50,000 times more qualified than DeVos.
Tennessee just rejected vouchers, again!
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OK, you know the man personally, I don’t. His wikipedia biography states, that he served as president of the University of Tennessee, from 1988 until 1991. I assumed that makes him an “academician”.. My mistake!
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Charles,
Many state university presidents are politicians.
Mitch Daniels was governor of Indiana, now president of Purdue.
Margaret Spellings, only a BA, was Secretary of Ed, now President of U of NC.
Cushy job
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Seeking an end around the Supreme Court’s Brown vs Board decision is the basic goal of the Koch Brothers and their newly purchased Republican (No Longer) Grand Old Party. DeVos’ silence answering questions from the Senate spoke volumes. She clearly has been appointed to roll back Civil Rights, and not just the rights of black and LGBT people, but the rights of all people not part of the investor class. Her opinion of whether any of the working classes should have public schools to attend is that they should not, unless wealthy, private Donors Choose to voluntarily invest in them.
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That goes for veterans receiving medical care too, by the way.
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I think you are spot on about the coordinated effort to overturn and/or ignore Civil rights legislation, especially bearing on schools and “public accommodations.”
A recent sociological study shows a general endorsement of market-based thinking/customer choice as the solution to cultural issues bearing on gender identiy and race. In this study white males who are Republican endorsed the idea that businesses should be able to choose their customers, a position not unlike the Supreme Court in the case of Hobby Lobby. Here is the study. http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/12/eaao5834.full
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Thank you. Frightening numbers. It’s surreal that attitudes today about segregation mimic those of the mid-twentieth century. Pretty soon, people will be dusting off those horrible “whites only” signs. Mob rule. The Court is no longer an institution of Justice, ruling that a ‘heteros only’ sign is acceptable by law (and after Citizens United shook the country’s faith in the Court already). The way things are going, there will eventually be ‘heterosexual White Anglo-Saxon Protestant or Aryan Lutheran land owning males by birth with no physical blemishes or intellectual disorders only’ signs.
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Here are eight things DeVos said during the year that reveal several things: how rocky her year was, the beliefs she holds fast, and what she is striving to accomplish as education secretary.
[What ‘school choice’ means in the era of Trump and DeVos]
1) During DeVos’s Jan. 17 confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) asked whether she would agree that guns don’t belong in schools. She 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.”
That statement had a long after-life, cited not only for DeVos’s refusal to support gun bans at schools but also as an example of her inability to articulate an answer in a setting where many expected her to be more prepared.
[Six astonishing things Betsy DeVos said — and refused to say — at her confirmation hearing]
2) Three weeks after becoming education secretary, she released a statement that called historically black colleges and universities “pioneers of school choice.” The problem with that was it ignored the history of why they came into existence: Black students were not allowed to attend white institutions and had no choice but to go to schools specifically created for them. Here’s what the statement said in part:
“They started from the fact that there were too many students in America who did not have equal access to education. They saw that the system wasn’t working, that there was an absence of opportunity, so they took it upon themselves to provide the solution. HBCUs are real pioneers when it comes to school choice. They are living proof that when more options are provided to students, they are afforded greater access and greater quality. Their success has shown that more options help students flourish.”
After a backlash, she walked back the “pioneers of school choice” notion in a series of tweets. It was a prime example of some of the verbal missteps that rocked her initial days at the Education Department.
[‘Totally nuts’: Senators blast DeVos for historically inaccurate comments about black colleges]
3) DeVos visited a traditional public school in the District early in her tenure and later described her stop in terms that teachers found insulting. She told columnist Cal Thomas of the conservative online publication Townhall that the teachers seemed dedicated and sincere but were in “receive mode.”
“I visited a school on Friday and met with some wonderful, genuine, sincere teachers who pour their heart and soul into their classrooms and their students, and our conversation was not long enough to draw out of them what is limiting them from being even more successful from what they are currently. But I can tell the attitude is more of a ‘receive mode.’ They’re waiting to be told what they have to do, and that’s not going to bring success to an individual child. You have to have teachers who are empowered to facilitate great teaching.”
DeVos has expressed admiration for teachers and has called for them to have more control over what goes on in their classrooms, but this description did not endear her to teachers at the school she visited. They tweeted their distaste, and Kaya Henderson, the former D.C. schools chancellor, tweeted this: “Sorry lady. Tried to give you the benefit of the doubt. But this is so amateur and unprofessional that it’s astounding. We deserve better.”
[Former D.C. schools chief takes on DeVos: ‘Sorry lady … this is so amateur and unprofessional’]
4) In speech after speech, DeVos would savage her critics, calling people who don’t share her vision for school choice “defenders of the status quo” (which her Democratic predecessor, Arne Duncan, did as well) and more. At a speech she gave in Indianapolis in May to the American Federation for Children’s National Policy Summit, an organization promoting school choice that she founded and led, she called them “flat-Earthers.”
“The point is to provide quality options that serve students so each of them can grow. Every option should be held accountable, but they should be directly accountable to parents and communities, not to Washington, D.C., bureaucrats.
“In order to succeed, education must commit to excellence and innovation to better meet the needs of individual students. Defenders of our current system have regularly been resistant to any meaningful change. In resisting, these ‘flat-Earthers’ have chilled creativity and stopped American kids from competing at the highest levels. Our current framework is a closed system that relies on one-size-fits-all solutions. We need an open system that envelopes choices and embraces the future.”
Along with other insults, such as “sycophants of the system,” DeVos has made clear she can find no common cause with people who don’t agree with her.
[This is what Betsy DeVos thinks about people who oppose her school-choice vision]
5) At a May hearing before the House Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies about the Trump administration’s 2018 budget proposal, which called for cutting more than 13 percent from education programs and re-investing $1.4 billion of the savings into promoting school choice, DeVos was asked whether private schools that accept public funds should be able to discriminate against some students. She said it was up to the states.
During the hearing, Rep. Katherine M. Clark (D-Mass.) said one private school in Indiana that accepts vouchers maintains it may deny admission to LGBT students or those coming from families with “homosexual or bisexual activity.” She asked DeVos whether she would tell the state of Indiana it could not discriminate that way if it accepted federal funding should a school choice program be created. Clark further asked what DeVos would say if a voucher school rejected African American students and the state “said it was okay.”
To Clark’s question about whether she would step in, DeVos responded: “Well again, the Office of Civil Rights and our Title IX protections are broadly applicable across the board, but when it comes to parents making choices on behalf of their students. . .”
Clark interrupted and said, “This isn’t about parents making choices, this is about the use of federal dollars. Is there any situation? Would you say to Indiana, that school cannot discriminate against LGBT students if you want to receive federal dollars? Or would you say the state has the flexibility?”
DeVos said: “I believe states should continue to have flexibility in putting together programs. . .”
[Five startling things Betsy DeVos just told Congress]
6) When Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris climate accord on June 1, DeVos issued a statement the same day applauding the move. A few days later, when DeVos was asked by reporters about her views on climate change, she responded:
“Certainly, the climate changes. Yes.”
Not only was that an example of her refusal to directly answer many questions, but it also suggested the U.S. education secretary supports Trump’s view that human-caused climate change is not real — despite overwhelming scientific evidence that it is.
7) In a June interview with the New York Times, DeVos said this about her children’s education, which was at private religious schools (as was hers):
“If you ask any of my kids today what their most important experience was in their education, they would say it was the travel and the ability to see and be in other cultures.”
8) In describing her vision for school choice, DeVos often says parents should have the right to choose whatever school works for their children, and has said she views success as being measured by how much school choice expands during her tenure. She explained her philosophy in a March speech, saying that selecting a school should be like choosing among Lyft, Uber or a taxi. And then, in September, during a speech at Harvard, she said:
“Near the Department of Education, there aren’t many restaurants. But you know what? Food trucks started lining the streets to provide options. Some are better than others, and some are even local restaurants that have added food trucks to their businesses to better meet customers’ needs.
“Now, if you visit one of those food trucks instead of a restaurant, do you hate restaurants? Or are you trying to put grocery stores out of business?
“No. You are simply making the right choice for you based on your individual needs at that time.
“Just as in how you eat, education is not a binary choice. Being for equal access and opportunity — being for choice — is not being against anything.”
Teacher Peter Greene, who writes the Curmudgucation blog, noted, “As always, DeVos chooses an analogy that paints education as a commercial transaction in which the customer buys some good or service. That is a flawed concept. . . . Like every other commercial enterprise, the food trucks of the District are not geared to handle all customers. There are many reasons that comparing schools to businesses is a huge fail, but this is one of the hugest: There is no business sector in this country built on the idea of serving every single person in the country.”
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BTW: Trump is now threatening nuclear war as if he’s in an SNL skit. I think he’s going to have to be removed from office due to the effects of dementia.
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Akademos: Trump should be removed for a whole slew of reasons. Unfortunately, the ruling party in Congress has decided to not pay attention to any of these reasons because they don’t want to upset their extreme right supporters. Just how BAD does Trump have to get before he is recognized as a threat to this country? Convince Fox and Rush L that our Great Leader is mentally unstable and has dementia.Then something will be done.
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https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/01/04/politics/psychiatrist-congress-meeting-trump/index.html
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“I believe Betsy DeVos has the talent, commitment, and leadership capacity to revitalize our public schools.”
Let’s remember that Betsy DeVos owes her confirmation to having the strong and unequivocal endorsement of Eva Moskowitz, who demanded that the Senate confirm DeVos.
Eva Moskowitz has never retracted her over the top endorsement of Betsy DeVos’ greatness and suitability for her position. So I assume she still holds it dear. Probably that is because DeVos did exactly what Moskowitz hoped she would do. So I guess we can thank Eva for all of DeVos’ hard work enacting her Eva Moskowitz-approved agenda this year and in the future.
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