By Bill Cole
On the eve of his inauguration, then President-elect Donald Trump boasted to an attentive audience about his recent pick of Sonny Purdue for Secretary of Agriculture. He remarked about Purdue, "He is a great farmer. He knows everything about farms. He knows everything about agriculture."
Trump proceeded to explain how during the selection process he asked the various candidates for the cabinet post "Do you have any experience with farms or agriculture?" to which they invariably replied "No sir. I don't." According to Trump this was a disqualifying response.
Unfortunately this same prerequisite of background experience did not apply to the position of Secretary of Education. Betsy DeVos was selected despite the fact she has no training as an educator, has no experience working as an educator and has never even attended a public school as a student herself.
She has proven to be manifestly unqualified for the position she is now serving. Her confirmation hearing was a farce as the Senate committee chairman, Republican Lamar Alexander, made the unprecedented move of closing down the session before members had an opportunity to ask all of their questions.
Committee members were also deprived of thoroughly questioning DeVos about her possible conflicts of interest tied to her enormous wealth and complicated financial investments. Even under these restrictive circumstances, committee members learned that DeVos did not seem aware of the federal special education law, which has been on the books for over 40 years.
She did not understand basic terminology related to student assessment. She also seemed incapable of affirming that charter schools and private schools using tax payer money should be equally accountable for their performance as their public school counterparts and ludicrously opined that having guns in schools might be necessary to properly fend off the threat of potential grizzly bears.
There were overwhelming concerns about DeVos's confirmation in the weeks leading up to the full Senate vote. Senators from both sides of the aisle across the country were reporting massive volumes of phone calls and emails, most of which were in opposition to DeVos. It was an act of democracy in its purest form. Two Republican senators got the message.
Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine voted DeVos down, both citing the wishes of their constituents as a major factor. It's a pity their party colleagues didn't follow suit, although there seems to be a pretty good indication of why.
According to the Center for American Progress and Federal Election Commission, the DeVos family has made nearly $1 million in campaign contributions to sitting Republican senators, including $98,300 to Marco Rubio of Florida, $70,200 to Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, $70,200 to Thom Tillis of North Carolina, $60,050 to Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and $51,000 to Rob Portman of Ohio and substantial donations to at least seventeen others. All of these Senators voted to confirm DeVos. If just one of these Republican senators voted against her she would not have been confirmed.
Alas, in the end, it seems all too clear Betsy DeVos bought herself the cabinet post.
So much for draining the swamp and ending crony capitalism in the age of Trump. Every attorney general in U.S. history has come from a legal background. Every Surgeon General has come from a medical background. Why do we treat expertise as negligible when it comes to the field of education?
The professional backgrounds of the individuals running these departments should matter. Even Donald Trump seemed to understand that much.
Bill Cole is a school psychologist and a publicist for the Morris County Council of Education Associations (MCCEA).
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