The purpose of the U.S. Department of Education is to ensure equal access to education and promote educational excellence throughout the nation. The Department is in charge of making sure that the $150 billion invested in students each year gets into the right hands and helps each student get the help they need to pay back their student loans. In other words, the financial future of an entire generation of students lies in the hands of Betsy Devos, the 11th United States secretary of education.
Betsy Devos has never been to public school and never sent any of her children to public school. That doesn't seem like such a big deal; a lot of families have traditions of sending their kids to private schools. Unfortunately, this is a big deal because Betsy Devos doesn't support public schools. She believes in not funding public schools and only funding charter schools and for-profit institutions. Another thing she believes: Public school teachers are overpaid. I'm sorry, what? It is a common known fact that public schools teachers are extremely underpaid, which is what caused all the recent university professors to strike.
It's great that Betsy Devos has a background as a business woman, philanthropist, activist and noted political campaign contributor. That makes her sound pretty successful. However, some recommendations for being the secretary of education include having background knowledge in handling money and some knowledge or association with schooling. In a recent Confirmation Hearing, Senator Elizabeth Warren asked numerous questions to Betsy Devos about her background.
Here are some fun facts Betsy Devos has given us: She has no direct experience in running a bank, handling any type of loan program, has never taken out a student loan from the government to pay for college for herself or for her children, and has no personal experience with the FAFSA program that every college student is required to fill out before entering college.
I'm sorry, but don't you think those are pretty serious things you should know about if you are secretary of education? This is starting to sound as reasonable as hiring a chef to be in charge of the Homeland Security Department.
As a current college student who is relying on loans to help with the payments, it scares the hell out of me to know that this woman is in charge of handling it all. I constantly fear for the future students who are preparing for colleges, or even high schools. If Betsy Devos stays in charge, I have no doubt that she will push for only private schools to be an option of education. Not everyone can afford private education like her family could. In other words, her thoughts and ideas lead towards the fact that if you can't afford to go to a private school, you won't be going to school.
