Betsy DeVos is the worst possible choice for Secretary of Education. She is not an educator, she never attended public schools, and she does not send her own children to public schools. She has no formal education in instruction or curriculum. She is a very powerful, rich, lobbyist. She has spent decades in Michigan trying to dismantle the public school system with vouchers, school of choice and charters. Her specialty is for-pay charters which have very little financial transparency and most importantly, they have not been educationally sound or effective.
According to Stephen Henderson in the Detroit Freepress: For 20 years, DeVos and her family have funded a charter school lobby that protects the industry from reasonable oversight and accountability, in part, through gross exaggeration and fibs of omission about school research.
In their telling, charter schools have achieved great success in Michigan, and especially in Detroit. They’ve transformed public education. But the data — even the data DeVos’ lobby so often cites — tells a different story. Stephen Henderson
DeVos and her cohorts cherry pick and massage data that does not reflect reality. Even her own flag ship for-profit charter school performs poorly.
Largely as a result of the DeVos’ lobbying, Michigan tolerates more low-performing charter schools than just about any other state. And it lacks any effective mechanism for shutting down, or even improving, failing charters. We're a laughingstock in national education circles, and a pariah among reputable charter school operators, who have not opened schools in Detroit because of the wild West nature of the educational landscape here. In Michigan, just about anyone can open a charter school if they can raise the money. That's not so in most other states, where proven track records are required. In other states, poor performers are subject to improvement efforts, or sometimes closed. By contrast, once a school opens in Michigan, it's free to operate for as long as it wants, and is seldom held accountable by state officials for its performance. Authorizers, often universities, oversee operation according to whatever loose standards they choose. And in Michigan, you can operate a charter for profit, so even schools that fail academically are worth keeping open because they can make money. Michigan leads the nation in the number of schools operated for profit, while other states have moved to curb the expansion of for-profit charters, or banned them outright. Detroit Free Press
Betsy DeVos is definitely not a champion of public education. However she is certainly a shaker and mover in Michigan politics. She and her husband Dick DeVos have tried to influence education in Michigan for years. They sponsored an unsuccessful voucher initiative which would have allowed the use of public school funding to be used toward tuition at private and religious schools.
DeVos is also a billionaire power broker with deep political ties at the state and national level. She served as a Republican National Committeewoman in the 1990s and was twice elected chair of the Michigan Republican Party, most recently from 2003 to 2005. Her husband, Amway heir Dick DeVos, ran unsuccessfully for Michigan governor in 2006. “They’re kind of viewed by the Democrats and the liberal elites as the Michigan equivalent of the Koch brothers,” said longtime state political pundit Bill Ballenger, who predicted a DeVos appointment would be “provocative” and controversial. Detroit News
Michigan’s experiences over the past two decades are sad and troublesome indicators of what the nation has to look forward to. Betsy DeVos will work to take down public education in the guise of better choices. She plays on the fact that all parents want the best education possible for their children. Instead, in Michigan, and now the rest of the country, they get mediocre and exclusionary schools with very little oversight.
Public education is in desperate need of insightful, informed leadership. Betsy DeVos is not that leader.