Division with a smile seems to be DeVos’ way
Schools have always been a battleground for equality in the U.S. Lately it seems the battle lines are being drawn on all fronts.
The first victory was segregation. The rationale — “separate but equal” — was debunked in Brown versus Board of Education. The ensuing federal mandate to integrate schools met significant resistance by southern governors demanding respect for “states’ rights.” The phrase became a powerful dogwhistle, a message delivered under the radar, but loud and clear to segregationists.
It’s been 63 years since Brown, but the spectre of states’ rights is once again rearing its ugly head, only this time, with a smile. One is reminded of Hamlet lamenting his uncle’s treachery: “That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.”
Does Betsy DeVos ever stop smiling?
President Trump’s choice for secretary of education grinned almost manically throughout the travesty of her Senate confirmation hearing, as though projecting confidence could make up for a wholesale lack of policy knowledge and experience.
She grinned as Sen. Al Franken explained, with some exasperation, how student assessment works. She kept grinning as she affirmed she had never administered a loans program; never taken out a student loan; never attended a public school, nor sent her kids to one.
In one infamous exchange, DeVos invoked the threat of grizzly bears when asked if guns had any place in schools. The less memorable but more telling part of her reply was delivered with an oily smile: “I think that’s best left to locales and states to decide.”
She trotted out the same answer on accommodating students with disabilities: “I think that’s a matter that’s best left to the states.” Citing the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, an incredulous Sen. Tim Kaine pressed on. Should families move to jurisdictions where children with disabilities are treated better? DeVos stuck with “it’s a state issue” like a game show contestant betting on her final answer.
Invoking states’ rights is no longer a clear black-and-white issue, but it’s still about protecting privilege. It means increased disparities between the able-bodied and disabled; families of means and students with loans; heterosexuals and LGBTQ students.
The point was hammered home last month as DeVos, still smiling, appeared before a House appropriations subcommittee on labour, health and human services, and education. Rep. Katherine Clark noted some faith-based voucher schools, which receive tax funding, refuse admission to LGBTQ students and those with non-gender conforming family members.
DeVos stayed on message, singing the praises of “returning decisionmaking power and flexibility to the states, where it belongs.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren has repeatedly sounded the alarm on school vouchers. She wrote to DeVos describing how vouchers were established “to allow white students to leave the education system and take tax dollars with them.”
The legacy continues: “They often leave school districts with less funding to teach the most disadvantaged students, while funnelling private dollars to unaccountable private schools that are not held to the same academic or civil rights standards as public schools.”
DeVos has maintained a willful blindness to these historical inequities, going so far as to refer to historically black colleges and universities as “real pioneers when it comes to school choice.”
Suggesting African American students of the civil rights era chose not to attend historically white universities is like saying I passed on size six shoes because I preferred a size 10. There was only one option that would allow me to walk through the door.
This week, Sen. Warren launched “DeVosWatch,” an online oversight resource with contacts for whistleblowers. The secretary’s top responsibility is to fight for students’ rights, not states’ rights.