Adam Laats, a historian of education and history at Binghamton University, explains why Betsy DeVos was stunningly ignorant and indifferent to the nation’s public schools. She didn’t care about them and considered it to be a waste of time to learn about them. And he adds some lessons from America’s past that illustrate the dark fears that conservatives express about public schools as sinister places where children are indoctrinated to leftist ideology.
The strange career of Betsy DeVos has been only the latest instance of this long legacy of conservative educational activism. Even before she became Trump’s education secretary, she harangued conservative audiences that public schools were nothing but a “dead end.” It wasn’t merely that public schools offered worse academics, DeVos warned. In a speech in late 2020, DeVos articulated some of her guiding beliefs about the dangers of public education. Public schools, DeVos suggested, threatened to yank children from the loving care of their homes and churches and wipe away “every distinctive feature of families.” Instead of sustaining and reinforcing the religious beliefs of conservative Christians, DeVos agreed, public schools would only cram “uniform guidance” down every student’s throat.
By injecting toxic strains of fear and suspicion into every dialogue, DeVos poisoned educational politics from the very top. Her strategy of attacking public education helps explain why she was so successful in keeping her seat in Trump’s Cabinet. President Trump himself harped on the same refrain...
The odd tenure of Betsy DeVos doesn’t make much sense in traditional terms. She was a department leader who despised her department, a spokesperson for public education who didn’t have any idea what to say. In more normal political times, it would have been impossible for her to keep her job. However, in the poisonous atmosphere of Trump’s White House, DeVos fit right in. Like her boss, she did not deal in facts and figures, in policies and plans. Instead, she drew on the long tradition of right-wing fright campaigns.
Why didn’t she bother to learn anything about public education? Because she knew her success lay elsewhere. As conservative activists have done for generations, Betsy DeVos only needed to attack a figment of the conservative imagination. She did not need to know what went on in real schools, because she only needed to resurrect a cartoonish misrepresentation, a bogeyman that had long haunted conservative nightmares.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s odd to read conservatives insistence that public schools are hotbeds of Leftist ideology if you live in a conservative area.
Do they really believe this? They think school boards and public schools in conservative parts of the country are liberal? Why? It doesn’t make any sense and it isn’t true.
Have any of them ever been to a conservative county in the US? The schools reflect the place. Unsurprisingly.
This fantasy they have that they’re some kind of marginalized minority just simply isn’t true in vast, vast parts of the United States. We have one Party rule where I live- that Party is the Republican Party. I never hear Democrats complaining that it’s some vast conspiracy. DeVos of all people knows this- she hails from a Republican part of Michigan, so it’s just another nonsense lie that she’s telling. Her direct personal experience belies her claims.
Republicans on Monday appointed Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who is a Parkland and Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist, to be on the House Committee on Education and Labor.
Our poor kids. Honestly, WHAT did public school students do to deserve such lousy politicians? Are they being punished?
As you articulate so well, there are many more out there with similar disdain. 29 states are run by majority Republican legislators with eyes on defunding public education while installing schools of “Christian” virtue. A great deal of work remains to be done.
If Trump and DeVos are emblematic of private school education, I am so fortunate to have had an excellent public education. I believe in science, and I don’t buy into conspiracy theories. There is a strong false belief on the right that public schools indoctrinate young people with ‘liberalism.’ So many of the critics of public schools are products of private religious schools. They have had zero experience with public schools, but they are prejudiced against them. Right wing libertarians and the evangelical right are spreading misinformation about public education as part of the campaign to undermine public schools, aka, government schools.
Often, in situations like the one you describe, it would be expected that a group similar to NPE would identify the individuals or groups working against them and then, plans would be formulated to lessen the impact of the opponents’ influence.
Less than a year ago, the following was reported, “Denis Poust, the Communications Director of the New York state (evangelical) Conference, the public policy arm of the state’s (evangelical) bishops said, ‘…the type grip of the public school teachers unions’, is the cause of the uphill battle that school choice faces.” The Massachusetts state (evangelical) Conference at its site has made direct criticism against public schools.
Let us never forget that toxic conservatives like Betsy DeVos and even worse toxic, radioactive freaks like Donald Trump are waiting in the wings for another election and another opportunity to lie their way back into power and continue the destruction of the United States. Their goal is to turn the U.S. into a racist, fascist, doctrinal-kleptocracy where children will be programmed K – 12 to think global warming is a hoax, dinosaurs and humans were all created at the same time about 6,000 years ago, if you are poor it is your fault, and if you die from a disease of any kind you deserve it because you are not a true beleiver.
If she truly believed that public schools,”yank children from the loving care of their homes,” she could have harnessed those beliefs to improve public schools to be more loving. This could be done with funding for smaller schools, smaller class sizes . . . . . mandating curriculum that allows for plenty of time to play, that develop social skills based on kindness, empathy, inclusion and environmental stewardship . . .
But she didn’t even try. Big phony.