Fox News asked Betsy DeVos what she would do if she was Secretary of Education in the 2nd Trump Administration

A month ago, Betsy DeVos was interviewed by Fox News, where she was asked about being the Secretary of Education in the second Trump Administration, along with what she thinks the Trump Administration should focus on regarding education policy.

Of course, Betsy DeVos was passed over, with Trump nominating Linda McMahon as the new Secretary of Education. However, this didn’t stop DeVos from speaking her mind about what the 2nd Trump Administration should do regarding the Department of Education.

Here are some highlights from what Betsy DeVos had to say:

• She hopes that Trump will complete the education agenda from the first term.
• DeVos believes that the Department of Education has been a completer failure, since its founding in 1979.
• DeVos said that one trillion has been spent on the Department of Education, with zero or near zero benefits.
• DeVos said, we are not talking about defunding or eliminating the budget, but having the money be more effectively spent – block granting back to the state and directly to families who need it the most.
• In response to “critics” of school choice programs, Betsy DeVos said that those are opposed to school choice have been around for a long time, but the achievement levels have increased with school choice programs. 
• DeVos also claims that teachers will benefit under the Trump Administration’s education priorities.
• DeVos claims that the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) reform will be beneficial to students, since it will move “professionals” into administering student loans, which means privatizing federal loans, which DeVos believes would mean more accountability. 
• DeVos would also love to see the Education Freedom Policy implemented. 

So far the Trump Administration has signed two Executive Orders related to the Department of Education and education policy – Keeping Education Accessible and Ending Covid-19 Vaccine Mandates in Schools, and Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling. 

GRIID methodically monitored the 4 years that Betsy DeVos spent in the Trump Administration, wiring about what the billionaire was doing and what her agenda was as the Secretary of Education. I put those articles under the section – Betsy DeVos Watch.

GRIID made it very clear in 2016, when Donald Trump asked Betsy DeVos to be his Education Secretary, that she has always been an enemy of public education. Betsy DeVos led a school voucher campaign in Michigan, a campaign that was defeated in 2000. Betsy didn’t let that stop her efforts to undermine public education, because the very next year she created the Great Lakes Education Project.

Betsy DeVos has always seen education as a talent pipeline for the business community, but more importantly, she has been promoting a NeoLiberal Education model for more than 3 decades.

During an American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) summit, DeVos used standard content from the Neo-Liberal playbook,  arguing states rights, choice, the market-place of ideas and even attempting to use language such as, “We the People.” One aspect of the Neo-Liberal playbook is to convince people that whatever policy the right wants to promote is all about freedom and liberty. In addition, one other major theme is to attack the federal government. This message has been central to every administration since Ronald Reagan, even though the Neo-Liberal agenda is not always against the Federal Government. For instance, entities like ALEC or the State Policy Network a deeply in favor of government intervention and policy when it comes to the annual US military budget, tax policies that benefit the wealthy and massive subsidies for corporations. Thus, the Neo-Liberal Agenda is quite selective in their notion of choice and freedom, especially when it comes to policies that benefit the Capitalist Class.

This is why Betsy DeVos promoted what she called Education Freedom Scholarships. According to DeVos, “The policy will make a historic investment in America’s students, injecting up to $5 billion yearly into locally controlled scholarship programs that empower students to choose the learning environment and style that best meets their unique needs.” These programs allow people and corporations to donate to a designated scholarship granting organization (SGO) and be reimbursed in the form of a tax credit. With the DeVos plan, states would designate the eligible SGOs, but the federal government would fund the tax credit reimbursement, up to $5 billion total. 

Betsy DeVos has been directly involved in getting these tax credit scholarship programs in the states in the graphic above, through a network of organizations that mirror groups in Michigan like the Great Lakes Education Project and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Across the country, the State Policy Network, which brings together groups that primarily push for policy changes at the state level.

The claim made by the former Secretary of Education that School Choice is better and that achievement levels have increased is in sharp contrast to the data and analysis of a 2019 report entitled, Still Asleep at the Wheel: How the Federal Charter School Programs Results in a Pileup of Fraud and Waste. There has been over $1 billion in federal funding for Charter Schools that either never opened or have since closed. The report’s Executive Summary states:

It is impossible to document total waste for the entire 25 year program because the Department never required the states to report the names of funded schools until 2006. However, we have now documented $502,468,123 (28 percent of the total database amount) that was awarded to schools from grants that were active between SY 2006-07 and SY 2013-14 that never opened or that have closed. Applying that percentage to the total expenditures ($4.1 billion) of the CSP programs designed to create new schools, approximately $1.17 billion in federal funding has likely been spent on charters that either never opened, or that opened and have since shut down.

Facts and data don’t matter to people like Betsy DeVos, not when their deep commitment to Capitalism and their ideological belief in God drives them.

When Betsy DeVos gave a speech at the far right school Hillsdale College, DeVos was more candid than usual, since she was speaker to those with the same ideological commitments. In part of her speech, DeVos didn’t mince words about what she really thinks of the American public that doesn’t embrace God and County, when she said: 

So, the unholy mob thinks our economies need redistributing. It thinks our Constitution needs rewriting. It thinks our families need restructuring. One prominent group was explicit about its desire to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure.”

That’s taken right from the old Marxist playbook. It admits the goal is to “[do] away with private property and [educate] children on a communal basis, and in this way [remove] the two bases of traditional marriage.”

While I miss the opportunity to critique Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, whatever the Trump Administration plans to do with the Department of Education and the Education budget will lean heavily on the network of charter schools and private schools across the US, along with think tanks, associations and organizations that are a part of the State Policy Network, all of which Betsy DeVos and her family have had a hand in crafting and funding. The battle for public education will be waged at the local and state level, regardless of whether or not the Department of Education will be dismantled under Donald Trump.