Betsy DeVos

Elisabeth "Betsy" Dee DeVos (née Prince; born January 8, 1958) is a former American government official who served as the 11th United States secretary of education from 2017 to 2021. DeVos is known for her support for school choice, school voucher programs, and charter schools. She was Republican national committee woman for Michigan from 1992 to 1997 and served as chair of the Michigan Republican Party from 1996 to 2000, with reelection to the post in 2003. She has advocated for the Detroit charter school system and she is a former member of the board of the Foundation for Excellence in Education. She has served as chair of the board of the Alliance for School Choice and the Acton Institute and headed the All Children Matter PAC.

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Quotes

I have decided to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now I simply concede the point. They are right. We do expect something in return. We expect to foster a conservative governing philosophy consisting of limited government and respect for traditional American virtues.
- in Roll Call, 1997 BETSY DEVOS, TRUMP’S BIG-DONOR EDUCATION SECRETARY, The New Yorker (November 23, 2016)

I would imagine that there’s probably a gun in the school to protect from potential grizzlies.
- Betsy DeVos suggests guns be allowed in schools threatened by grizzly bears (2017)

More and more parents are coming to realize their children are suffering at the hands of a system built to strangle any reform, any innovation, or any change. . . . This realization is becoming more evident as the momentum builds for an education revolution.
- From remarks at the American Federation of Children made in May of 2016, as quoted in "Betsy DeVos, the (Relatively Mainstream) Reformer," by Michael McShane, EducationNext (2017), Volume 17 (No. 3).

More and more studies show that kids are actually stoppers of the disease and they don’t get it and transmit it themselves, so we should be in a posture of — the default should be getting back to school kids in person, in the classroom
- According to Fact Checker: DeVos’s claim that children are ‘stoppers’ of covid-19

I voted against the nomination of Betsy DeVos, a billionaire Republican donor, because she is the most incompetent cabinet-level nominee I have ever seen.
- Al Franken
- https://www.franken.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=3615

During the first term of the Obama administration, no fewer than eighteen billionaires came together under the Koch brothers' leadership to oppose the president's initiatives and move this country in an extreme right-wing direction. Some of the other billionaires involved were Richard Mellon Scaife, an heir to the Mellon banking and Gulf oil fortunes; Henry and Linda Bradley, defense contractors; John M. Olin, involved in chemicals and munitions; the DeVos family, the founders of the Amway corporation; and the Coors brewing family of Colorado.
- Bernie Sanders Our Revolution (2016)