WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Senate has confirmed Betsy DeVos, a controversial school-choice proponent, as U.S. education secretary, a win for President Donald Trump as he moves to shake up domestic policy.
The vote just squeaked by, with Vice President Mike Pence serving as a tiebreaker for the 50-to-50 vote. Every Senate Democrat voted no, as did two Republicans.
“I can’t support Betsy Devos because I can’t look Ohio parents in the eye and tell them she won’t put profits before education,” Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, said on the Senate floor in an impassioned speech.
Ohio Republican U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, subject of an intensive email and phone campaign from critics, voted for confirmation. Portman said he is convinced DeVos believes in public education and will work to provide opportunities for all students.
“She’s led the most effective school reform movement in 30 years,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican and former education secretary who chairs the Senate education committee.
Trump, like DeVos, supports expanding the use of tax money for vouchers and private schools, giving parents and students more choices of where education dollars are spent. Proponents of school choice, including many Republicans, say this creates competition that can spur public school improvement, and puts more power for decisions in parents’ hands.
Sen. Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican, said more choice would help students in districts like Detroit’s, where he said only 9 percent of African-American children and 13 percent of white children meet standards for English.
“We need to make sure the kids of America have a choice,” Scott said.
Critics, including teachers’ unions, public school board members and many Democrats, say it drains public schools of needed tax money and sometimes siphons off higher-achieving students and motivated families. This can leave public schools with a bigger education challenge and an unbalanced student mix — while also leaving them with less money. Charter schools, some run by corporations, have been controversial in Ohio for a lack of accountability and questionable record-keeping.
DeVos, a billionaire philanthropist whose father-in-law cofounded Amway, has been a figurehead in the for-profit charter school movement. She has chaired groups including All Children Matter, a pro-charter school political group fined by Ohio in 2008 for campaign law violations. DeVos donated to the committee’s defense but says the fine, with which fees has now reached $5.3 million, is not her obligation.
Democrats, backed by an aggressive call-in and letter-writing campaign from public school teachers and liberal advocacy groups, blocked the nomination as long as they could. After a 24 hour mock filibuster filled with anti-DeVos speeches, Democrats yielded back the floor back at noon Tuesday to Republicans, who even with two “no” votes mustered 50 votes for confirmation. With the nomination one vote shy of a majority in the 100-member Senate, Pence, sitting in as the presiding officer, cast the deciding vote.
Two dissenting Republicans, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collin of Maine, agreed with Democrats’ criticism. DeVos, the critics said, not only wanted to divert money from public schools but showed a questionable mastery of education policy and law. For example, she said at a confirmation hearing that schooling for children with disabilities “is a matter better left to the state.”
She later corrected herself in a letter. The federal Individuals With Disabilities Education Act requires schools to provide a free and appropriate education, and following the law is not supposed to be up to states.
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