Trump’s campaign did not answer questions about why DeVos was excluded from the lineup. From the secretary’s own team, DeVos Education Department spokeswoman Angela Morabito said “has never sought the spotlight” and is instead “focused on doing what’s best for students, and making sure they have a voice in the debate.”
Among the core fan club for school choice, DeVos is still a star. In the eyes of democratic political strategists, she has long been seen as the perfect villain to help train against the president. The polarizing secretary is therefore not an obvious choice for locking up new votes or turning a hesitant voter into a Trump-backed contingent, says Jeffrey Henig, director of the Teachers’ College’s Politics and Education Program at Columbia. University.
“The evangelical and private religious school constituency is already on board for Trump. Proponents of charter schools may be valuable to Trump in mobilizing, but they distrust DeVos,” Henig said.
Plus, Henig added: “She’s done badly in some public presentations.”
During its Senate confirmation, DeVos suggested that guns could be used in schools to combat grizzly bear threats. Earlier this year, she pledged to personally fund a scholarship for a fourth-grader Philadelphia to appear in the presidency of the state of the Union, before the Philadelphia Inquirer revealed that the girl was already one of the most sought after charter schools of Philadelphia followed. When Trump tried to promote the full reopening of schools this summer, DeVos stumbled into the appearance of Sunday’s talk show, at one point claiming that data showed no danger to children returning to classrooms.
In addition, DeVos has repeatedly received the lowest rating of favorites from any cabinet secretary in the Trump administration and is often criticized for leading a lavish lifestyle with a fleet of private helicopters, boats and vacation homes.
For more than three and a half years, DeVos has strengthened the school choice for Trump’s name, and has maintained it as a member of the president’s cabinet, despite the dismissal of 10 other secretaries during that time. Now, her life’s work deserves broad exposure to the convention and makes the interest of parents disappointed about the virtual education their local public schools have served during the pandemic.
School districts across the country are reporting drastic declines in enrollment this school year, including a 5.5 percent drop in enrollment among elementary school students in Broward County, Fla., The sixth-largest school district in the country. Anchorage schools could drop up to $ 30.1 million in revenue this fiscal year this year by thousands of students leaving, the Anchorage Daily News reported last week.
Speaking to school choice lawyers last month at a video conference, DeVos said there are “many, many children in our country today at schools that just do not work for them.” New polls suggest a growing contingent of voters agrees.
In a survey of more than 1,000 adults, the annual PDK Poll on Public School Attitudes found that four in 10 respondents said they support the addition of local charter schools, even if it means funding is available for traditional public schools. That’s up 28 percent in 2005.
When Trump noted only two priorities on Sunday in the second term, Trump said he “would like to see school choice.” Speakers at the Republican Nominating Convention have raised the issue several times. First Lady Melania Trump is committed to using her “Be Best” campaign to “support education that meets the individual needs of a child” if her husband wins another four years in the White House. Donald Trump Jr. argued that, “if Democrats really want to help minorities in underprivileged communities, instead of bowing to bosses with big money bonds, they would let parents choose which school is best for their children.”
Vice President Mike Pence highlighted in a video a boy from Wisconsin who used a school voucher to attend another school. On Wednesday, the GOP Congress included Tera Myers, a woman in Ohio whose son has Down Syndrome, who spoke about how school choice helped “the dreams of her children.”
DeVos did not even get a role in a video montage during the convention on female leaders in the Trump administration.
Rick Hess, director of education policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, states that DeVos is still “highly valued” and “an icon” for people who are passionate about school choice in conservative circles.
“She’s pretty sweet,” Hess said. “She talks and communicates with audiences who are happy to hear from her.”
The Trump campaign previously used DeVos as an asset to help voters with school choice policies. The secretary of education was one of dozens of surrogates who spearheaded the campaign for his display of power during the Iowa caucuses in February. DeVos also traveled with Pence to Wisconsin for an official event that promotes school choice. She headed a women’s rally for Trump a year earlier, alongside the vice president.
DeVos has continued to make the rounds at events for a core district of school choice supporters, as well as its participation last month in the video conference organized by the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, a conservative group that supports school choice. During the conference, the Secretary of Education spoke about her proposal for “education freedom scholarships”, which would create a $ 5 billion federal tax credit for donations to scholarship organizations to pay for students to attend private schools or expand their options for public education.
Legislation to promote that goal, however, has not made significant progress.
DeVos has tested the limits of its power as education secretary to encourage school choice during the pandemic. When Congress put billions of dollars in coronavirus relief fields under the CARES law in March, it created a rule to transfer more of that funding to private schools than the usual formula. But a federal judge in California this week halted the secretary’s effort in at least eight states and some of the nation’s largest public school districts.
Trade unions and Democrats have also decided that DeVos should decide to devote some of its help to ‘microgrants’ for families to use for distance learning and technology.
