Betsy DeVos’s tenure as education secretary has been anything but ordinary.
The Michigan billionaire and private school voucher champion has drawn no shortage of attention and controversy since the moment President Trump nominated her to the nation’s education bully pulpit.
DeVos has visited Colorado twice since her confirmation. But even from afar, she’s loomed large over the state’s education policy and politics — including during November’s local school board elections.
Democratic U.S. Sen Michael Bennet of Colorado sharply questioned DeVos during her confirmation hearing, suggesting that school choice in DeVos’s native Michigan did not include the strong accountability measures that exist in Denver. Bennet, a former Denver Public Schools superintendent, invited DeVos to visit Denver schools to see that firsthand.
Bennet was not done criticizing DeVos, though. He took to Twitter to challenge DeVos’s implication that choices in Denver are lacking because students can’t use private school vouchers or don’t have enough charter school options.
It didn’t take long for teachers union leaders to evoke DeVos’s name in a debate over policy. In March, the union branded a bill to boost charter school funding as a “Betsy DeVos-Style Privatization Bill. The legislation passed and was signed into law.
DeVos also became a factor in November’s Denver school board election when teachers-union funded independent committees financed fliers that sought to tie the education secretary to school board candidates the union didn’t support.
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