It is hard to find anyone more passionate about the idea of steering public dollars away from traditional public schools than Betsy DeVos,
Donald J. Trump’s pick as the cabinet secretary overseeing the nation’s education system.
For nearly 30 years, as a philanthropist, activist and Republican fund-raiser, she has
pushed to give families taxpayer money in the form of vouchers to attend private and parochial schools, pressed to expand publicly funded but privately run
charter schools, and tried to strip teacher unions of their influence.
A daughter of privilege, she also married into it; her husband, Dick, who
ran unsuccessfully for governor of Michigan a decade ago, is heir to the Amway fortune. Like many education philanthropists, she argues that children’s ZIP codes should not confine them to failing schools.
But Ms. DeVos’s efforts to expand educational opportunity in her home state of Michigan and across the country have focused little on existing public schools, and almost entirely on establishing newer, more entrepreneurial models to compete with traditional schools for students and money. Her donations and advocacy go almost entirely toward groups seeking to move students and money away from what Mr. Trump calls “failing government schools.”
Conservative school choice activists hailed her on Wednesday as a fellow disrupter, and as someone who would block what they see as federal intrusion on local schools.
Former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, where Ms. DeVos helped push legislation establishing tax credits for scholarships to private schools, called her an “outstanding pick,” a “passionate change agent to press for a new education vision.”
“Her allegiance is to families, particularly those struggling at the bottom of the economic ladder, not to an outdated public education model that has failed them from one generation to the next,” he
wrote on Facebook.
Frederick M. Hess, the director of education policy studies for the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington, called Ms. DeVos a “smart, principled small-government conservative who’s experienced in politics and versed in the relevant policy.”
But to teachers’ unions, she is anathema.
Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, called Ms. DeVos “the most ideological, anti-public education nominee” since the secretary of education was elevated to the cabinet level four decades ago.
