President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Republican philanthropist Betsy Devos to head the Depart of Education. DeVos has made a name for herself by championing school choice:
DeVos is the chairman of the American Federation for Children, the nation’s largest school choice advocacy group. The federation has worked at the state and local level to advance the expansion of charter schools and other education reforms. She and her husband, entrepreneur Dick DeVos, created the West Michigan Aviation Academy, a charter high school in Grand Rapids, in 2011.Nearly 40 percent of the academy’s student body is economically disadvantaged and more than one in three students are minorities. It has reached parity with other district schools and was one of just 93 Michigan schools to earn a Silver Medal from the US News & World Report‘s high school rankings. US News & World Report ranked the school among the top 70 schools in the state, which had about 900 public and charter schools in the 2015-2016 school year, and named it one of the 1,800 best schools in the country.
Trump released this statement:
“Betsy DeVos is a brilliant and passionate education advocate,” Trump said Wednesday in a statement. “Under her leadership, we will reform the U.S. education system and break the bureaucracy that is holding our children back so that we can deliver world-class education and school choice to all families.”
A few groups DeVos belongs to has “offered support for the controversial Common Core state curriculum standards,” but The Detroit News reported that Devos’s personal views on the standards “are less than clear.”
Trump criticized Common Core on the campaign trail and even said a few times he would like to eliminate the Department of Education.
UPDATE by WAJ:
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