Editorial: DeVos survived in Trump's Cabinet largely by failing

The Columbus Dispatch
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos

When U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos took the job as the nation's chief educator, she probably never imagined that a pandemic would strike, requiring her to exert actual leadership in extremely difficult circumstances. It's a role for which she is utterly unqualified.

From the time of her confirmation hearings, when she betrayed her ignorance about the controversy surrounding how best to measure student progress, it was clear that DeVos had neither the expertise nor the skills required for the job.

What she did have were three goals: Push funding for private and religious schools at the expense of public schools; strip college students of protection from predatory for-profit colleges; and weaken civil rights protections for transgender students.

In other words, for a president who has no interest in improving the educational lot of students, DeVos has been a perfect and thus particularly long-serving Cabinet member.

As COVID-19 swept through the nation and shut down more than 120,000 schools, DeVos could have been supporting them, lobbying for more money and personal protective gear to help them reopen and providing lesson plans and model online curriculum for them to follow. 

Instead, her main contributions were to tell schools they had to reopen even where health officials were saying it was still unsafe, and to try to funnel pandemic funding intended for disadvantaged students into private schools. 

Thankfully, the courts ruled against her often, especially on the question of whether students who had been duped by shady practices at certain for-profit colleges had to continue paying off their loans. 

She has made a couple of positive contributions: Her rewrite of sexual-assault rules for college campuses was more right than wrong, initiating important due-process protections for students accused of assault. She also has extended loan-repayment relief for college graduates who cannot manage the expense during the pandemic, a no-brainer.

But it's time for actual work on the nation's schools to begin. President-elect Joe Biden, who wants to reopen most schools by May, already has outlined two of the most pressing items: setting guidelines for when schools should reopen and how they should go about doing it. 

The new administration needs to make safe reopening a top priority. Neither today's kids nor the nation as a whole can afford to lose this much learning.

A new, hopefully far-more-qualified education secretary won't forget about charter schools, which were supposedly a priority for DeVos but one she did little to advance. Biden has spoken out against for-profit charter schools, but close to 90% of charters are nonprofits that play an important role in allowing parents to choose schools that might work better. 

The new secretary should bring back strong oversight of for-profit colleges and refuse to provide federally backed student loans for colleges that aren't performing as promised for students. He or she should reverse DeVos' dogged attacks against protections for transgender students.

The future calls for creative planning. Now that most students in the nation have been equipped with computers and broadband, how can those tools be used to improve their education once the pandemic is over?

Remote learning might help us rethink education, though as an expansion rather than as a replacement. A wise new education secretary will take advantage of the lessons we're learning now, demonstrating the leadership that DeVos hasn't been able or willing to provide.

Los Angeles Times