Recently, our “charming” Secretary of Education Betsy Devos was interviewed on 60 Minutes by Leslie Stahl. The interview was wonderful Secretary Devos was extremely knowledgeable and provided a great insight into the Trump Administration’s education policy. These policies however, consist of precisely the opposite actions that true education officials, teachers, parents, and students are asking for. This includes the de-funding of public schools through the reduction of federal grants, reducing federal over-sight programs responsible for maintaining consistency, and completely disregarding responsibilities held by a Secretary of Education.

In researching background information to provide some insight on Betsy Devos, one finds a Christian education, a history of supporting private charter schools, and a total lack of capacity to hold her current office. According to the 60 Minutes interview, her proudest achievement as Secretary of Education isn’t even a completed action; she told Lesley Stahl, “We’ve begun looking at and rolling back a lot of the overreach of the federal government in education.” This isn’t an accomplishment, but rather feeling proud of herself for reducing her own job responsibilities.  She goes on to state that the reason she isn’t popular with the people is that “…I think there are a lot of really powerful forces allied against change.” The real reason we don’t like Betsy Devos is her inadequate policy and inability to function in the position she was appointed to.

The main issue Betsy believes plagues the Public School System today is its inability to cater to all types of learners. Her solution to this is to withdraw funds from our schools and reinvest that money in for-profit charter schools across the country so that learners can simply chose the best option for themselves. However when asked to speak about under performing schools, Ms. Devos said “I hesitate to talk about all schools in general because schools are made up of individual students attending them.” To compound this issue The Secretary has yet to visit under performing schools but admitted “Maybe I should. Yes,” she responded, when Stahl suggested she visit the poorer schools under her purvue. Quite simply, divesting from schools brings down scores. Furthermore Devos stated that after billions of dollars of investment in education, no results had been achieved, that absolutely nothing has been achieved throughout the decades of education reform. This is concerning, as Stahl contradicted The Secretary with  her own departments statistics showing that on average scores have been going up for the last 25 years. Devos seemed oblivious to this statistic or even to the concept of funding schools when she said, “Well, we should be funding and investing in students, not in school — school buildings, not in institutions, not in systems.” This sounds as though Devos doesn’t even know what federal funding is. Having someone in charge of our future generations who simply doesn’t know how to do their jobs should be worrying to us all.

Devos also graciously provided her input on the recent Parkland shooting and the sexual assaults plaguing the nation. She refuses to acknowledge that the students want gun control, saying that they want many things and not specifically gun control. This was an attempt to distract the interview from returning to gun control where she had endorsed giving communities the option to arm their teachers with fire arms, yet personally recounted that she would have been concerned if her own teachers had fire arms. On the topic of sexual assault Devos appears to believe that rape and false accusations are equally common and has repeatedly compared the two as one in the same. She seems to feel for the rapists almost as much as she feels for the victims. When asked if they were the same she replied, “I don’t know.”

Betsy compared her confirmation hearing to having a root canal done. She imagined (as she has never had one) that her confirmation was likely more painful. I can assure you Betsy, as someone who has had a root canal. That watching you in office is far more painful and long lasting than any tooth extraction.