Last December, then President-Elect, Donald Trump appointed Betsy DeVos as his cabinet choice for United States Secretary of Education. DeVos was confirmed by the US Senate on Tuesday, February 7th.

“This is a person who believes so much in privatization,” social science teacher John Costley said. “that they’re willing to do, for ideological reasons, things that have turned out to be harmful.”

DeVos’ confirmation by the Senate came as a 50/50 vote that had to be settled by the now Vice President Mike Pence which resulted in a 51-to-50 approval that allowed DeVos to be in the president’s cabinet. Such a close vote can be attributed to the controversy over who the Secretary of Education is and how much the Federal Government should be involved in education-related decisions.

“I’m not sure that education is something the Federal Government should have any say over,” Costley said. “that seems to be to me something that is left to the states and states ought to be able to decide for themselves, through their elected representatives, what they want done in their own state.”
Twenty-four hour long riots broke out across the nation prior to the Senate’s vote on whether DeVos should be placed in the presidential cabinet or not. Now DeVos has been placed in the cabinet. She promises to support school-choice policies and restoration of state power in education-related decisions.