Niki McClure, Managing Editor
It was a 50-50 tie, but new vice president Mike Pence broke that tie with his vote going to Betsy DeVos for Secretary of the Department of Education.
Unfortunately for American students, DeVos is not the most qualified individual for the job. With a bachelors in art, DeVos is not prepared to tackle policy, federal assistance and enforce laws dictating the future of public education easily.
DeVos has experience being a businesswoman while working with Windquest Group. She is even the president of the company. However, being the head of a multi-million dollar company is much different than understanding what the American people want out of their education and applying it to policy and newly implemented programs. For instance, she will not be able to relate to the typical middle class American because of her astronomical wealth.
Betsy speaks as chairman of the American Federation for Children.
As a multi-billionaire, she and her family have donated about $200 million dollars to the Republican party, the party responsible for nominating and electing her to office. Even after all of that, DeVos said before she was confirmed that she would take a salary of just $1. DeVos is not the only one with these unrelatable financial circumstances. All of the individuals that president Donald Trump has nominated total to a net worth of approximately $11 billion, according to CBS News.
To put this into perspective, the average middle class American is worth $44,900 (CNN Money), and DeVos is about 110,000 times that.
This does not just mean that politicians are more wealthy than they have been in at least three presidencies, but that this White House will create economic monopolies. This will occur when the billionaire politicians in the White House make policies based off of what will increase their margins the most rather than what will benefit the majority of the American citizens.
DeVos went to a private school and sent her children to private school as well, so her knowledge on the public school system will be minimal.
For instance, no one can tell which side she is on for the common core debate. She is the chairwomen of the American Federation Of Children, which supports common core. The AFC is also an organization that has supported DeVos, the Republican party and attacked Democrats during the election. For someone who has no experience in politics, an organization such as this would have a major influence on her views and votes.
To further confuse matters, DeVos took some pointers from Trump when people were attacking her for supporting common core education. DeVos clarified that she does not support common core on the social media site.
DeVos is a supporter of school choice, where tax dollars paid by parents will go to the school that their child chooses to go to rather than being limited to the school in their area. Take, for instance, a school district that does not provide a very good education for its students. Students from that school would naturally want to get a better education and move to a different school if the opportunity was there. The problem with this is that these students will disrupt the natural bell curve of abilities and skill level of the schools they are moving to.
Expectations for student’s education will be set based on the newly shifted educational level within a particular school rather than setting expectations as high as possible, to help all students to strive for their potential. Also, with students leaving “bad” school districts, those schools will use money and possibly put teachers out of work. This will in turn will put those schools further in a bad position because they will also lose crucial government funding. They will no longer be able to make their school better.
School choice sets schools that need improvement up to fail rather than identifying those types of schools and pushing them to improve education they are providing.
The department of education oversees all variations of secondary education as well, in one way or another. A major part of this is financial aid. It has been confirmed that DeVos has stakes in Performant, a student loan collection agency. Performant will have a major advantage if they have ties with the Secretary of Education, the one who influences student loans and tuition costs.
Additionally, This is not the first cabinet member that has stocks in a company. Tom Price has stocks in health care companies which would conflict with his duties as the Health and Human Services Secretary.
When Trump was choosing his nominations for cabinet, DeVos should not have been chosen to be the secretary of the Department of Education. The educational future of many young Americans are now in the hands of an art major with no experience with the public school system and may make decisions based her stocks in a loan collection company.
There is never an end to a decision in a country with democracy and freedom of speech. Contact your local or state representatives when you believe that the actions of our government are not reflecting what this country will benefit from.