5 things to know about Betsy DeVos, Trump’s new education secretary

Trump called DeVos, 58, a “brilliant and passionate education advocate” in a news release Wednesday.

President-elect Donald Trump just tapped two smart, tough women to help lead his administration: South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, as his USA ambassador to the United Nations, and Betsy DeVos, as his education secretary. But DeVos is also a heavily-criticized advocate for school choice, charter schools, and voucher programs.

The DeVos family has pumped millions of dollars into the American Federation for Children (AFC) over the past several years, with much of it finding its way to IN – a state that has been one of the leading battlegrounds IN the school reform movement. Critics say choice plans undermine public education, are often underregulated and can amount to profiteering. But, thinking more broadly, what we are trying to do is tear down the mindset that assigns students to a school based exclusively on the ZIP Code of their family’s home.

Indeed, as the Illinois Education Association (IEA) likes to remind us, teachers’ working conditions are students’ learning conditions. In addition, voucher programs have proven ineffective, lack accountability to taxpayers, deprive students of rights provided to public school students and threaten religious liberty.

DeVos was a member of Acton’s Board of Directors for 10 years and while it’s unclear how much influence she currently has on the organization, its homepage now prominently features a message congratulating DeVos on her nomination. Her children attended private Christian schools.

“We understand that the foundation of public education is based on the ideal that our public schools serve every child that comes to our schoolhouse door”, he said.

She drives teachers’ unions insane.

Union hostility towards DeVos is no surprise.

Photo of President-elect Donald Trump with Betsy DeVos, his nominee for education secretary. DeVos’s statement turned a well-known Trump slogan, and proclaimed, we will make American education great again. The unions are the teachers and are trying to give them control over their workplaces against the bureaucrats who often have little to no experience in the classroom or with students. “This is indeed a dark day for public education in America”. DeVos and husband Dick led an unsuccessful ballot effort in 2000 to amend the MI constitution to allow vouchers for students to attend private schools using taxpayer dollars.

DeVos is among a handful of billionaires who have created and underwritten the rapid expansion of charter schools since 2000.

On record, DeVos and her family was not a supporter of Trump and his campaign. The West Michigan Aviation Academy opened in 2010. Some 80 percent of the state’s charters are run by private companies.

One-half of the biggest power couple in MI politics, DeVos is the former head of the state Republican Party and the founder of the Great Lakes Education Project, the state’s most vocal backer of private charter schools.

DeVos lost to Granholm by 14 points. DeVos said Amway had expanded operations to sell products in China, which required them by law to open a Chinese factory.