Betsy DeVos’ Advice for Trump’s Next Education Secretary
Alyson Klein
November 7, 2024
Former U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos can’t wait to see a second Trump administration finish what she helped start.
DeVos, a billionaire philanthropist and veteran school choice activist, joined former President Donald Trump’s Cabinet after a historically grueling confirmation process that required Vice President Mike Pence to cast a tie-breaking vote in her favor. She hoped to help him deliver on a dramatic proliferation of school choice and a major rollback of the federal education bureaucracy.
But the first Trump administration saw only modest progress on both fronts. And DeVos—who’d notched major policy victories as the founder of the American Federation for Children, a school choice advocacy organization—became a political lightening rod who faced so many threats of physical violence that she became the first education secretary to be given the protection of federal marshals.
