Betsy DeVos and why we can’t go back on Election Day
Betsy DeVos and why we can’t go back on Election Day
If anyone needed more motivation to vote this fall, there’s this: Betsy DeVos has gone on the record saying she would like to return to her former job as the U.S. Secretary of Education if Donald Trump is elected president in November.
She told reporters in Michigan she would return to Washington if Trump followed through on his plan to phase out the federal education department. And she said she supports a national voucher program to subsidize exclusive private schools with taxpayer money.
DeVos has lobbied to rollback protections for LGBTQ+ students and coddled greedy loan servicers. As secretary, she turned her department “into a subsidiary of predatory for-profit colleges that saddle students with crushing debt,” as The New York Times put it.
DeVos, a billionaire donor with no public education experience before taking the top job, is one of the reasons why thousands of educators are already campaigning this fall. She’s a living symbol of why we can’t go back.
Instead, we can choose to build on Minnesota’s success in 2022 when educators came together to elect pro-education state-level candidates, who took control and passed the most progressive education agenda in America in 2023.
The $5.5 billion in new spending over the next four years led to the largest pay raises for educators in a generation, unemployment insurance for ESPs, unprecedented care for students who were hungry or struggling with their mental health and launched Gov. Tim Walz onto the national stage.
The same year, Minnesota educators in nearly three dozen districts rose up against MAGA school board candidates who rejected our commitment to respecting every student and guaranteeing the freedom to teach without bans on books and curriculum.
Union-endorsed school board candidates won 85% of their races. Many locals learned for the first time how powerful they could be when they endorsed candidates and organized on their behalf.
Educators in many other states wish they had our success. More than 20 state governments banned 4,300 books in school libraries in 2023 alone. Twenty-nine states have at least one voucher-style program draining money from public schools. Many programs had a scandalous lack of oversight, with school dollars redirected to kayak lessons, trampolines, horseback riding, SeaWorld tickets and home gyms.
The work we’ve done, and wins we’ve won, has given us more freedom to decide the future of public schools than educators in most other states. We cannot let the opposition trick us into apathy and inaction through distractions and their weird, homophobic slurs. This is our time, and the public is with us.
Earlier this summer, Education Minnesota polled Minnesota voters, with an emphasis on the parents of public-school students. We asked them to name the biggest strength of their local schools. The answer was overwhelmingly: the educators.
Educators are trusted and respected—even if it doesn’t always feel that way—and the public deserves to know our assessment of the candidates from the top of the ticket to the bottom.
So, I hope Minnesota’s educators join me at the door knocks, lit drops and phone banks for our endorsed candidates as we tell voters what our schools need, including how to fix the staffing shortage by improving educator pay, pensions and health care.
I like our chances of winning again this year. We’re leaders, our vision includes every student, and we’re voters. And because, to paraphrase Gov. Walz, you should never underestimate a public school educator. Never.
Together,
Denise Specht
Twitter: @DeniseSpecht
