By Valerie Strauss
washingtonpost.com — Does this sound familiar? Betsy DeVos went to Capitol Hill to testify before U.S. lawmakers. She didn’t answer a lot of direct questions and engaged in some contentious debates with some members.
That happened in January when she went before the Senate education committee for her confirmation hearing, during which she said schools needed guns to protect against grizzly bears. This time, the education secretary didn’t talk about guns, but she did say that states should have the right to decide whether private schools that accept publicly funded voucher students should be allowed to discriminate against students for whatever reason they want.
DeVos testified before the House subcommittee on labor, health and human services, education and related agencies about the Trump administration’s 2018 budget proposal, which would cut $10.6 billion — or more than 13 percent — from education programs and re-invest $1.4 billion of the savings into promoting school choice.
Both DeVos and President Trump have said expanding alternatives to traditional public schools are their top priority, and during tough questioning from some committee members, DeVos doubled down on that as well as on giving states and local communities flexibility to do what they want with their education programs. It is worth noting, however, that she said recently that people who don’t agree with expanding school choice are “flat Earthers,” people who refuse to face the facts.
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