Democrats reject her, but they helped pave the road to education nominee DeVos
It wasn’t all that long ago that it would have seemed impossible for anybody who labeled the U.S. public education system a “dead end” to be nominated as U.S. Secretary of Education, much less get support to be confirmed. Not anymore.
Betsy DeVos, a Republican billionaire from Michigan who public school advocates see as hostile to America’s public education system, is likely to be confirmed despite a rocky Senate committee hearing, where, under caustic Democratic questioning, she seemed not to know basic education issues.
If DeVos does become education secretary, Democrats will of course blame the Republicans. DeVos is, after all, a Republican who has donated millions of dollars to Republicans, was selected to be education secretary by a Republican, and would win confirmation thanks to the Republican majority in the Senate.
But the record shows that Democrats can’t just blame Republicans for her ascension. It was actually Democrats who helped pave the road for DeVos to take the helm of the Education Department.
Democrats have in recent years sounded — and acted — a lot like Republicans in advancing corporate education reform, which seeks to operate public schools as if they were businesses, not civic institutions. (This dynamic isn’t limited to education, but this post is.) By embracing many of the tenets of corporate reform — including the notion of “school choice” and the targeting of teachers and their unions as being blind to the needs of children — they helped Democrats reject her, but they helped pave the road to education nominee DeVos - The Washington Post:
