DeVos Confirmed – Isakson Statement
There is much rending of the garments and gnashing of the teeth by liberals, teachers’ unions and educrats everywhere, as Betsy DeVos was confirmed by a vote of 51-50 to be the new Secretary of the Department of Education.
Senator Johnny Isakson was one of the 51, and issued the following:
“Last year, Congress worked hard to return control of education to parents and local school boards, and Mrs. DeVos has demonstrated her strong commitment to follow the intent of Congress as implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act continues,” said Isakson, a member of the Senate committee that oversees education. “I appreciate her commitment to parents’ roles in education and school choice, as well as her statement of strong support for ensuring that kids with special needs get a personalized education plan. I also pledge to work with Mrs. DeVos in her new position to ensure the rights of all students are looked after moving forward.”
DeVos’ critics accused her of not having sufficient exposure to public schools, and being therefore “unqualified” to lead the DOE. But education blogger Amelia Hamilton took a different tack:
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“There is much rending of the garments and gnashing of the teeth by liberals, teachers’ unions and educrats everywhere…”
You left out parents. Quite a few parents, myself included, are against allowing someone to buy a position of power over public education. She doesn’t just have a lack of exposure to public education. She has a lack of experience in anything to do with education except donating and lobbying to support her ideology. This is not something conservatives should be proud of as it reeks of cronyism and sends the message to all students that they can work as hard as they want and dedicate themselves to their career and it won’t matter because someone like her — with money and an agenda — gets to call the shots.
Oh please. Donna Shalala had no background in health and human services when she was appointed to lead that department. She was a political science major/professor who was president of the University of Wisconsin and went straight from that job to HHS. Federico Pena? Similar. No background in Energy before taking over the Department of Energy. He was a lawyer, became mayor of Denver, and then Secretary of Labor.
Once you get past the “big jobs” i.e. Defense, Treasury, State the appointees often do not have experience in that area and no one cares. Also, this has nothing to do with being a school choice advocate. Rod Paige was also.
The real issue with DeVos is that she has a strong social conservative background (as opposed to a lot of GOPers who are only social conservatives during election time). That was why the Democrats – as well as two pro-abortion Republican senators – voted against her. It was a trial run, a shot against the bow, for the upcoming battle over a hypothetical Supreme Court vacancy if a member of the libertarian/social liberal block retires. It was not at all over the very tiny role that the federal government actually has to do with schools in rural Alaska, as Linda Murkowski would have you believe.
Though I don’t generally engage in the back and forth of “you can’t be against her if you were not also against x, y, and z”, both of the people you listed had relevant experience to the positions they held, even if that had not been their primary field. DeVos brings nothing but money and ideology. Other nominees are also terrible for other reasons and are examples of people with no experience in an area running it (Carson and HUD), but this looks to the general public like a blatantly bought position of power. She donated directly and generously to several of the senators who voted for her. You can minimize it all you want but if this were a Democratic admin and senate we’d be hearing all about how corrupt the DNC is.
Please cite for me the relevant experience that Julian Castro had that Ben Carson does not.
Held elective office. Held administrative positions. Doesn’t have weird ideas or make shit up. Doesn’t support Trump.
You should be happy today. You got your charter school champion and who cares if she had to buy her way in.
Was Julian Castro one of those mentioned?
You said Carson is unqualified (amazingly, so did he). I’m just asking if you believe his immediate predecessor had any qualifications for running HUD than the person you cite as unqualified had. Because your partisanship is showing with your selective outrage. Again.
I said Carson had no relevant experience. That’s not great, but I’m not too worked up about it. I don’t plan to call my senators about him like I did for DeVos and will for Pruitt. I mentioned him to counter the implication that my opposition to DeVos is solely about inexperience. Focusing on the lack of experience argument is a way to minimize the very clear appearance that DeVos bought her position. Her lack of experience just makes it that much more stark.
Partisanship shows in both the writing and the reading of a comment.
Again, Castro, confirmed with little discussion or opposition, had what relevant experience, exactly? You’re the one that brought up Carson. Now defend his predecessor on the terms you now wish to measure cabinet appointees.
I’m not opposed to Carson. I said he had no relevant experience, which you appear to agree with. So at this point you are trying to change the subject to avoid acknowledging that it looks like DeVos bought her job.
That said, I believe being the mayor of a major city is somewhat relevant experience. Certainly just as relevant as having run for president.
FreeDuck, with all due respect you are wrong. Donna Shalala had absolutely no background in health or social welfare. She was a political science major, political science professor, university administrator and university president when she went to head HHS. You can make the case that she had administrative experience but that is it. We are not talking about someone who was a nursing professor or social work professor, but political science. Now Shalala would have had a great background to lead the Department of Education, but not HHS. And get this: HHS is a much larger, much more critical agency than Education, which was split off from HHS in the 1970s.
Another guy: Bill Bennett. The guy had a Ph.D. in philosophy and was on the National Endowment for the Humanities when Reagan tapped him to be head of the education department. DeVos has done MUCH MORE in education than Bennett ever did before he was appointed.
Cabinet posts and ambassadorships have long been places to stash contributors and ideologues. This only became an issue because the DeVos family are very active religious conservatives. That is why if you go read the New York Times article on the DeVos confirmation, half of it talks about opposition from feminist and LGBT groups. It doesn’t mention the rural education, IDEA or other so-called education policy issues that Murkowski and Susan Collins raised at all. It was just about trying to block a female anti-abortion social and religious conservative activist from a Cabinet position that does have some influence over domestic social policy and activism. I give the media 5 minutes – if that – before they start asking her about her position on creationism and abstinence education. Oh, and transgender access to bathrooms. Can’t forget about that vital public education issue.
Yeah. Mayor of a major city has been a prerequisite for the job for Secretaries of both parties, from Mel Martinez to Moon Landrieu.
It’s astounding to see Charlie throwing around “partisanship” and “selective outrage” while drumming up a rather astounding bit of false equivalence.
The Amelia Hamilton snippet is good spin, but illogical. Simply put, DeVos does not equal the Dept. of Education, so you can object to her without objecting to the Dept.
The Secretary of Education is basically (1) a grantmaker who oversees several billion dollars in federal funds (which actually make up less than 10% of all dollars spent on public education in the U.S.) and (2) a spokesperson who has a bully pulpit to talk about public education but holds no real power over any state or local school systems.
I am not thrilled by her support of privately run for-profit charter schools with little or no regulation. I wasn’t concerned that she’s not knowledgeable about special education. All enforcement of federal education law is handled by the federal Office of Civil Rights, NOT by the federal Department of Education.
As a longtime grantmaker in her family’s private foundation, she is very well-qualified to do the actual work of the U.S.E.D., which is to make block grants to the states. Congress made many changes to the role of the Secretary of Education after Arne Duncan left, strictly limiting the SecEd’s power. For example, the SecEd can no longer issue “conditional waivers,” where states can earn more federal dollars if they comply with policies that the U.S.E.D. favors, as was the case with Race to the Top.
Her foundation, the American Federation for Children, is an organization I have supported for years.
Mike Pence owns her now. He had better hope she doesn’t fail.
It is quite literally impossible to fail at that job. The Department of Education is one of the smallest and least influential cabinet posts. There are sub-cabinet jobs such as FEMA, NSA director and FBI director, ATF director etc. that have more responsibility and day to day responsibility. The Department of Education was split off from HHS during the Carter administration for reasons that pretty much no one can identify. It is a political job for show and not a whole lot more.
Speaking of Mike Pence, you hit on the real reason for her opposition: she and Pence are both religious/social conservatives who will actually work to advance a religious/so-con agenda. I know that this blog – and before it Peach Pundit when Icarus became the most influential blogger – is now a libertarian/social liberal one with pretty much no social conservatives left, but the fact is that as ACTUAL religious conservatives are not allowed real power in the GOP, DeVos and Pence were pretty much the only ones willing to back Trump. No one else would go near him with a 10 foot pole (especially back when they were certain that he would lose the primary and then the election). So you had a bunch of back benchers and has-beens who would have never gotten a leadership role or spokesman role for a major candidate otherwise like Jeff Sessions, the Perdues, Price, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Pence (whom the national party abandoned after the gay rights boycott hammered Indiana) and DeVos. Their guy won and this is the payoff. Everyone who bucked the national party and backed Trump – and especially those who did so early when it mattered – that was actually willing and able to get a job in this administration got the one that they wanted. It is just politics, as was this dog and pony show of opposing her in order to send a message to Trump about the type of opposition that he will get if he doesn’t nominate another David Souter, Sandra Day O’Connor or Anthony Kennedy – a social liberal or libertarian – to the Supreme Court when/if the time comes to replace a member of the socially liberal bloc.
With repubs in the majority in congress it would be a good time to look at abolishing this department. Unfortunately, it won’t happen because there are many “conservative” repubs that want to perpetuate this 70+ billion dollar mess.
Everybody complains about the sad state of education in this country. Education in this country is “highly decentralized” compared to other countries. Hmm, I wonder if there is a connection. Maybe eliminating the DoEd will help.