Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Education, indicated that she was open to radically rethinking the federal government’s role in education on issues from sexual assault cases on college campuses to cutting federal support for the nation’s public schools in a contentious confirmation hearing Tuesday evening.
Democratic senators repeatedly pressed DeVos to spell out her specific vision for the Department of Education, but the education activist and billionaire from Michigan kept mostly to generalities, outlining a broad vision of school choice where parents could use state money to send their kids to private or charter schools. Democratic senators questioned whether this would drain money from already struggling public schools and reduce options for children with special needs.
In her opening statement, DeVos said students should have the option of “magnet, virtual, charter, home or faith-based” schooling, but stressed that the “vast majority” of kids would remain in traditional public schools.
The Trump transition team was aware DeVos would face heat in her confirmation hearing. Peter McPherson, the president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities and former deputy secretary for the Treasury, coached DeVos for the hearing, according to a source on the transition team. She was calm and collected under aggressive questions from the committee’s Democrats, but also at times appeared evasive or unprepared, declining to answer direct questions about whether she would support certain specific policies or not.
When pressed by Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, DeVos would not commit to maintaining the same or higher level of federal funding for public schools. She told Sen. Bob Casey she would “review” federal regulations that govern sexual assault allegations on college campuses. DeVos told Sen. Elizabeth Warren that she would also review the department’s gainful employment rule that revokes federal funding of colleges whose graduates have low employment rates—an Obama-era crackdown on for-profit colleges. She said states should decide whether all schools—charter and public—should be required to meet the needs of kids with disabilities.
DeVos and Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., meanwhile, got into a protracted back and forth about whether she believed public schools and charter schools should face the same government accountability standards. DeVos asserted several times that she believes in accountability in general without answering Kaine’s question about whether the standards should be the same.
Two of the committee’s Republicans, Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, signaled some reservations about DeVos. Murkowski said her constituents are “concerned” about DeVos’ nomination because in rural districts, school choice is not an option. Collins mentioned offhand that the two did not see eye to eye on some issues, without elaborating.