BY LAURA MARKWARDT

Yesterday, Betsy DeVos, President Trump’s education secretary nominee, submitted written answers to questions from the Senate Education Committee. As in her hearing, she avoided substantially answering questions.

Senator Patty Murray says that DeVos’s answers are lacking and has called for a postponement of today’s scheduled committee vote.

Senator Al Franken confirmed last week that all HELP Committee Democrats will be voting against her nomination and that three Republicans would need to join them to prevent her from landing the position, adding that there was a strategy around this he couldn’t discuss. Franken said, “We’re trying to find Republicans who will vote against her because she’s an ideologue who knows next to nothing about education policy as we demonstrated, or she demonstrated really, in her confirmation hearing.” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also strongly opposes her, and said, “Betsy DeVos would single-handedly decimate our public education system if she were confirmed.”

Senate phone lines and email boxes have been jammed with public response and anti-DeVos sentiment. Teachers and parents have organized protests opposing DeVos in her hometown, on Capitol Hill, and in communities across the nation. #DumpDeVos signs were also prominently on display at widespread marches taking place since the inauguration. Over 250 civil rights groups have signed a letter of opposition.

Unless this message was received, it appears likely that the Senate HELP Committee will approve DeVos on a party-line vote when it comes together today at 10 a.m. DeVos’s nomination would then go to the full Senate for approval.

The AAUP has urged the United States Senate to reject Betsy DeVos’s nomination as education secretary, saying:

Given her documented lack of qualifications and hostility to public education, DeVos is manifestly unqualified for the position. In both ideology and practice she has violated the principles of quality education that the AAUP has defended for over a century. Far from seeing our public schools as a valuable asset, DeVos understands them instead as a source of revenue to fill the pockets of corporate school entrepreneurs. Her privatization schemes have done much damage in several states, especially Michigan. They treat students as widgets in a machine to produce a profit for well-heeled investors. In Ohio, DeVos broke the law by knowingly making illegal campaign contributions through her school choice PAC, resulting in a fine of over $5 million that has yet to be repaid eight years later. This brings her personal ethics and responsibility into question.

Her policies have consistently failed, producing schools with de facto segregation, low academic performance, and a lack of local control. DeVos also supports imposing a vision of militant Christianity that enthusiastically violates the American tradition of the separation between church and state. Further, DeVos ignores the research that leads to best practices in education if that research differs from her uninformed personal beliefs.

Our students should not be pawns in an ideologically-driven gamble to profit from their education. We urge the rejection of DeVos as a dangerous choice for the future of public education in the United States.

Image: @NoelCandelaria / Twitter