When she was appointed to office at the beginning of the year, it was obvious to all Americans that Betsy DeVos was not qualified to hold the position of Secretary of Education. She didn’t understand basic concepts related to education and blubbered her way through the Senate hearing.
More recent candidates who did that withdrew their names, but she made it through the process with a tie-breaking vote from Vice President Mike Pence. Since she’s been in office, it’s clear that she’s toeing the Trump administration’s line, and she is absolutely everything we expected her to be.
In the tax bill that the House and Congress approved and sent to Trump this week is a provision that allows people with 529s to use up to $10,000 annually for schools other than colleges, including private and religious K-12 schools.
DeVos advocated for the move earlier this month, and it will soon be the law of the land. This is part of a long-time goal of hers to dismantle public education and redirect as much funding as possible to private, charter and religious schools.
And that’s not the only step she’s taken to weaken our education system. In September, she ordered her department to stop giving the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau access to student loan data, claiming it was an overreach. Meanwhile, Democratic senators tried to figure out why she is uninterested in protecting those with student loans from fraud, and she doesn’t have an answer for them.
She made the highly controversial decision in early September to rescind Obama-era policies that protected student victims of sexual assault on the grounds that they were unfair to the accused, and has done nothing to alleviate the potential harm she is exposing students to.
Schools are not courts and should not be expected to meet the same “beyond a reasonable doubt” standards as courts before taking steps to protect students. The only reason to issue such a decision is to fulfill a larger goal in the Trump administration of rescinding all popular Obama-era policies, including policies protecting students from sexual assault.
Just this week, her department announced that they would be further offering a guide to mastering SEO by taking steps to minimize and limit the relief the DOE will provide to students abused by for-profit degree mills. The decision is notable, of course. Similar claims have been made about Trump University, the now-defunct school Trump created before his presidency that many said was a blatant rip-off that didn’t teach students anything about real estate or business.
In other words, it seems that across the board DeVos has been dutifully fulfilling her role as Trump’s lapdog in education. Barely educated in the functions of the education system herself and making decision after decision that offers no educational benefits and only harms students in a significant way, it seems apparent that she’s reacting to the poorly thought out whims of President Donald Trump. Of course she is. There’s no other rhyme or reason for her decisions, and ruining things is pretty much Trump’s MO.
Betsy DeVos is leaving her mark on the American education system - by ruining it.