ELISABETH DEE (PRINCE) DEVOS
Betsy DeVos, United States Secretary of Education.
Daughter of Edgar Prince, founder of the Prince Corporation.
Daughter-in-law of the recently departed Richard DeVos, founder of Amway.
Part of a family listed by Forbes in 2016 as the 88th. richest in America, with an estimated net worth of $5.4 billion.
Her nomination on November 23, 2016 by then-President-elect Donald Trump — after his first choice, Jerry Falwell Jr. respectfully declined the offer — was controversial to say the least.
On January 31st following strong opposition from Democrats, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions approved her nomination on a party-line vote, sending it to the Senate Floor.
On February 7, 2017 DeVos was confirmed by the Senate.
“Little pig, little pig let me come in.
Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin.”
Deadlocked at 50–50, Vice President Mike Pence was summoned to break the tie in her favor. It was the first time in U.S. history that the confirmation of a Cabinet nominee was decided by the Vice President’s tie-breaking vote.
In February of 2018 President Trump enthusiastically supported the idea of giving teachers bonuses if they agreed to carry guns in the classroom. He heartily embraced the NRA position that highly trained teachers fortify themselves and those around them against mass shootings by fighting gunfire with gunfire.
Shoot to kill times two.
In an unprecedented twist the Education Department is considering the prospect of allowing states to use federal funding to purchase guns for educators.
Although this action would reverse a longstanding federal government position that it should not pay to outfit schools with weapons in addition to undermining the efforts of Congress to restrict the use of federal funding on guns — as recently as March, Congress passed a school safety bill that allocated $50 million a year to local school districts, but expressly prohibited the use of money for firearms — the department under DeVos and with Trump’s stamp pushes on.
Championing the value of and ultimately selling the Student Support and Academic Enrichment grants, a program in federal education law which skirts the issue of prohibiting weapons purchases, would effectively ensure that DeVos reign freely.
She would be allowed to exercise her own discretion as to the approval of any state or district plans using grant funding for firearms and firearms training. Only a Congressional clarification of the law or a legislative ban on such funding could stop her.
Kary Moss, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan released this statement about DeVos immediately following Trump’s decision to nominate her, skewering the Michigan billionaire and conservative activist:
“We strongly urge Congress to scrutinize the record of Betsy DeVos, who has been a staunch proponent of school vouchers, a misguided idea that diverts taxpayer dollars into private and parochial schools and perverts the bedrock American value of separation of church and state. She and her husband served as the primary fundraisers and engine for a Michigan ballot initiative — Kids First! Yes! Coalition that voters soundly rejected in 2000.
She has ardently supported the unlimited, unregulated growth of charter schools in Michigan, elevating for-profit schools with no consideration of the severe harm done to traditional public schools. She’s done this despite overwhelming evidence that proves that charters do no better at educating children than traditional public schools and only serve to exacerbate funding problems for cash-strapped public districts.
We believe that all children have a right to a quality public education, and we fear that Betsy DeVos’ relentless advocacy of charter schools and vouchers betrays these principles.”
This from a Michigander, one among many from the Great Lakes State who best know the education advocacy work of DeVos, the former Republican Party chairwoman in Michigan.
Stephen Henderson, the editorial page honcho of the Detroit Free Press is another. And he pulls no punches when critiquing DeVos and assessing Detroit’s deeply dysfunctional educational landscape.
Privatizing public education by working to create programs and enact laws which require the use of public funds to pay for private school tuition in the form of vouchers and the like will doom the public education system.
Further, the proliferation of charter schools in Michigan engineered by DeVos and her camp offers choice in numbers perhaps but sacrifices quality by any and all measure.
It is well-documented that most of these charter schools have recorded student test scores in reading and math that fall well below the state average.
Henderson points out that the nation’s largest urban network of charter schools rewards failure.
Hope Academy on the west side has been serving the community around Grand River and Livernois for twenty years. Its test scores have been among the lowest in the state over the two decades; in 2013 the school ranked in the first percentile, the bottom rung of academic performance. Two years later its charter was renewed.
Woodward Academy downtown is a charter that has scuffled and kicked around since 1998 recording abysmal school achievement results, yet its operator has been allowed to expand into other communities.
And it’s no better in Brightmoor where the only high school still standing, a charter known as Detroit Community Schools, holds the dual dubious distinctions of a decade of poor test scores and (until recently) an under-qualified superintendent at the helm to the tune of a $130,000 annual salary.
The ideological lobby that has trumpeted and celebrated free-market education reform for decades with little regard for the outcome features Betsy DeVos at its center, on the marquee and under the baldachin. Her family has contributed millions of dollars to create the movement: school ‘choice’ and unregulated charter expansion throughout Michigan.
These are the facts of the case according to Henderson.
His conclusion?
DeVos is unqualified to lead the United States Department of Education. Period. She’s not an educator.
“She’s not an expert in pedagogy or curriculum or school governance. In fact she has no relevant credentials or experience for a job setting standards and guiding dollars for the nation’s public schools.”
In a nutshell, Henderson states that, “she is, in essence, a lobbyist — someone who has used her extraordinary wealth to influence the conversation about education reform, and to bend that conversation to her ideological convictions despite the dearth of evidence supporting them.”
Just warming up he continues.
“For 20 years, the lobby her family bankrolls has propped up the billion-dollar charter school industry and insulated it from commonsense oversight, even as charter schools repeatedly failed to deliver on their promises to parents and children…Wealth should not buy a seat at the head of any policy-making table…[and this] is true especially in public education — a trust between government and the people that seeks to provide opportunity for those who wouldn’t otherwise have it.”
That Betsy DeVos, described by her supporters as “an ‘advocate’ who cares for children,” is in command of an entire arm of the federal government defies logic. It is ludicrous and laughable. What credibility does she have in general and specifically in a policy job that demands she advocate for all schools?
The motivation to establish an industry first and consider the quality education and welfare of kids second is clear.
To wit: The DeVoses have catalyzed private interests to wrest public monies intended to fulfill the state’s mandate to provide compulsory education; they founded the Great Lakes Education Project (GLEP) whose political action committee does the most aggressive and widespread lobbying for charter schools and they have contributed more than $2 million to the PAC since 2001.
GLEP has spent that money to buy policy outcomes which have fueled the charter industry’s growth while shielding it from accountability; and the family contributed $1.45 million over a two month period to Michigan GOP lawmakers and the state party after the Republican-led Legislature killed a bipartisan provision that would have ensured closer charter school supervision and stewardship in Detroit.
The DeVos’ intense lobbying efforts have resulted in Michigan tolerating more low-performing charter schools than almost any other state. Exacerbating this is the fact that no effective mechanism for shutting down or improving failing charters exists.
Henderson is resolute in his belief that the DeVos family lobbying has not been good for Detroit or for Michigan. Promoting the charter industry and its middling-at-best results at the expense of quality education for kids is blasphemous to say the least.
It is sinful.
Sorry. Betsy DeVos as the United States Secretary of Education is likewise.
[Editor’s Note: This piece was written by Mr. Kaplan in September 2018.]
