What to make of the tenure of U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos depends, like Beauty itself, on the eye of the beholder.
To the president who asked her to run the Department of Education, she was a loyal lieutenant who argued for her department’s irrelevance in a nation where control of schools is a local affair — that is, until she argued the opposite, at the president’s urging, and threatened schools with a loss of federal funding if they refused to reopen mid-pandemic.
To Christian conservatives, she was a hero who once proclaimed, “I fight against anyone who would have government be the parent to everyone.” DeVos used her bully pulpit to champion religious education, push for school choice and help private schools in financial turmoil.
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