Biden’s New Education Secretary Immediately Begins Cleaning Up The Betsy DeVos Disaster

Last updated on July 18th, 2023 at 12:33 pm

Joe Biden‘s newly confirmed Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, was sworn in on Tuesday and is planning an immediate push to undo the damage that Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos did to the department.

According to The Hill, “Education advocates believe [Cardona’s] experience with public schools will be critical to rebuilding trust in the department among teachers and families and will allow the focus to return to education policy rather than the politics that dominated DeVos’s tenure.”

While Cardona is a career educator, DeVos was a Republican megadonor who “rarely advocated for public education” during her tenure leading the department.

To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.

More from The Hill:

While in office, DeVos largely unwound Obama-era policies that provided additional civil rights protections to students and protected them from for for-profit colleges. She aggressively pushed school choice and rarely advocated for public education. The final year of her tenure was marked by the shuttering of schools during the pandemic and the Trump administration’s subsequent effort to resume in-person learning.

…

Cardona will be charged with simultaneously reversing many of the rollbacks that took place during the Trump administration while also implementing a Biden administration agenda that has put an emphasis on closing gaps in education inequality that have been laid bare by the coronavirus pandemic.

DeVos left the Trump administration in a whimper

Betsy DeVos began her tenure with the Trump administration after former VP Mike Pence had to break a 50-50 Senate tie in her confirmation vote.

Her time in the administration ended in a whimper when she tried to shield herself from any accountability for Trump’s Jan. 6 insurrection by resigning.

During the transition between the Trump and Biden administrations, DeVos even encouraged her staff to be the “resistance” against the incoming president.

Betsy DeVos was one of the worst Education Secretaries this country has ever had, and the Biden administration is quickly moving to clean up the mess she left behind.

Follow Sean Colarossi on Facebook and Twitter

Sean Colarossi

Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.