BETSY DEVOS/EDUCATION: “For years, Betsy DeVos traveled the country — and opened her checkbook — as she worked as a conservative advocate to promote the expansion of voucher programs that allow parents to use taxpayer funds to send their children to private and religious schools.
A detailed look at the first six months of Ms. DeVos’s tenure as the secretary of education — based on a 326-page calendar tracking her daily meetings — demonstrates that she continues to focus on those programs as well as on charter schools.
Her calendar is sprinkled with meetings with religious leaders, leading national advocates of vouchers and charter schools, and players involved in challenging state laws that limit the distribution of government funds to support religious or alternative schools…
The appointment books also include discussions related to traditional public schools, such as a telephone call in February with Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, which represents 1.7 million public schoolteachers and other employees nationwide. Ms. DeVos then had a follow-up visit in April with Ms. Weingarten to a public school in Ohio.
But the emphasis, a review of the calendar shows, is on the same kinds of alternatives that Ms. DeVos promoted when she was a conservative philanthropist donating money to groups like Alliance for School Choice and the Foundation for Excellence in Education, which advocate school choice.
Nathan Bailey, a spokesman for Ms. DeVos, said she had met with a variety of players from the world of education, including state education chiefs, superintendents, principals and teachers.”
-Eric Lipton, “Betsy DeVos’s Schedule Shows Focus on Religious and Nontraditional Schools,” The New York Times online, Oct. 27, 2017