Before she was even sworn in as Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos emerged as one of the most controversial members of the Trump Administration. Her confirmation required a historic tie-breaking vote from Vice President Mike Pence after every Senate Democrat and two Senate Republicans voted against her. In the months since, like many others in the Trump Administration, DeVos has set about rolling back Obama-era policies, from Title IX guidance on campus sexual assault to regulations on for-profit colleges. She quickly found support from conservatives who had backed her previous work as a school choice advocate, but she struggled to build broad national support for her initiatives. DeVos, a prominent Republican donor, faced criticism from Democrats, teachers’ unions and civil rights advocates, many of whom noted that she did not have a background as an educator.
It would be an understatement to suggest that DeVos’ first year alone has sparked a number of controversies, some of which include:
In September (2017), DeVos rolled back controversial Obama-era guidance on how universities should handle sexual assault complaints on campus. The 2011 guidelines had instructed universities to use a “preponderance of the evidence” standard when adjudicating sexual assault complaints instead of the “clear and convincing evidence” standard, which requires a higher burden of proof and was used by some schools at the time.
DeVos stoked further controversy when she held meetings on campus sexual assault in July (2017), speaking with victims of sexual assault as well as students who say they’ve been falsely accused. Coupled with the acting head of the department’s Office for Civil Rights assertion that 90% of sexual assault complaints “fall into the category of ‘we were both drunk.’
Under her guidance, the Department of Education and the Department of Justice rescinded guidelines that allowed transgender students to use the bathrooms aligned with their gender identity.
In June (2017), an internal memo indicated that the department was scaling back investigations into civil rights violations at public schools and universities. In the two months that followed, the department also closed or dismissed more civil rights complaints than previous administrations had in similar periods of time.
DeVos has also led efforts that blocked the Obama Administration’s protections for students attending for-profit colleges. The regulations would have provided debt forgiveness to students defrauded by for-profit colleges and would have cut off funding to for-profit colleges that burdened students with loans while failing to prepare them for gainful employment.
Let’s fast-forward to now. DeVos is once again making waves and headlines as she ponders whether to allow grants from the academic support fund to be used for a highly controversial purpose: guns. The $1 billion Student Support and Academic Enrichment grants is intended for the country’s poorest schools and school districts to use the money toward three goals: providing well-rounded education, improving school conditions for learning and improving the use of technology for digital literacy.
Given the fact that the Every Student Succeeds Act, signed into law in 2015, is silent on weapons purchases, that omission would allow Ms. DeVos to use her discretion to approve or deny any state or district plans to use the enrichment grants under the measure for firearms and firearms training.
In addition, such a move would reverse a longstanding position taken by the federal government that it should not pay to outfit schools with weaponry. It would also undermine efforts by Congress to restrict the use of federal funding on guns.
DeVos is clearly an anomaly, who is ill prepared for the job. She is the first education secretary in the department’s 35-year history to not have been a public-school parent or student. DeVos attended private institutions for both grade school and college, and her four children were educated at private schools, too.
In my view, Betsy DeVos is unqualified, clearly unfit, and obviously too conflicted to serve as the U.S. Education Secretary and who, for all intents and purposes—appears bent on taking down the very institution she’s entrusted with.
The U.S. Department of Education’s office for civil rights has started dismissing hundreds of disability-related complaints, following new guidelines that say such cases will be dismissed when they represent a pattern of complaints against multiple recipients.
The office enforces laws such the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, both of which prohibit public entities from discriminating against individuals based on disability. It also enforces Title IX, which prohibits discrimination based on sex, and other laws that prohibit discrimination based on age, race, color, or national origin.
Marcie Lipsitt, a special education advocate in Franklin, Mich., estimates that over the past two years, she has filed more than 2,400 complaints to the Education Department over educational entities that have websites that are inaccessible to those who are blind or visually impaired, or who cannot use a mouse to navigate a website. Lipsitt’s targets have included school systems, universities, library systems, and state departments of education.
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Education Week – Originally Published February 14, 2017
For the third time since she was confirmed as education secretary, Betsy DeVos spoke with a Michigan media outlet to discuss her confirmation process and her priorities. And she made it clear she’s looking for ways to reduce the size and scope of the U.S. Department of Education.
In a Tuesday interview on the Michael Patrick Shiels radio program, DeVos said the confirmation was an “interestingand protracted” process, and that she was glad to get started as secretary. Asked by Shiels about the education department’s responsibilities, DeVos noted that it was only her fourth day on the job at the department. Then she said:
I can’t tell you today what is being done that’s unnecessary. But I can guarantee that there are things that the department has been doing that are probably not necessary or important for a federal agency to do. We’ll be looking at that. We’ll be examining and auditing and reviewing all of the programs of the department and really figuring out what is the core mission, and how can the federal department of education really support and enhance the role of the departments in the states. Because really, when it comes down to it, education and the provision of education is really a state and local responsibility to a large extent…
Hemmed in by a Republican-controlled Congress and President Donald Trump, the top Democrats in the Senate and House have been working to parry GOP advances in general. But when it comes to education, could Democrats cut deals with Trump on at least a few issues?
The two parties have shown some willingness to find common ground in other areas. Prime example: the deal Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi struck with Trump last month to raise the debt ceiling and keep the federal government running through the rest of 2017.
The move stunned GOP leadership. But if Trump is willing to work publicly in that way with leaders of a party he frequently blasts, are there any deals to be had on education and…
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is shooting back at one of her biggest political foes and defending her approach to civil rights enforcement.
In a July 11 letter to Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., DeVos said that while upholding the nation’s civil rights laws is “among the most important missions” at her department, the Obama administration’s decision to expand the scope of investigations into potential violations meant that too many individual students’ complaints went unaddressed. That approach, DeVos said, created a “justice delayed is justice denied” situation.
Murray, however, didn’t respond directly to DeVos’ message. In a July 14 response, the top Democrat on the Senate education committee told the secretary that her department still hasn’t provided information Murray had asked for, including on open cases involving transgender students and sexual harrassment as of the end of January and on all the civil rights probes at her department that have been closed…
The U.S. Department of Education’s office for civil rights has started dismissing hundreds of disability-related complaints, following new guidelines that say such cases will be dismissed when they represent a pattern of complaints against multiple recipients.
