The detailed calendar entries suggest Ms. DeVos remains closely involved with some of the people helping to lead or advise leaders in the school choice movement. Among them are Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster, whom Ms. DeVos was scheduled to meet on June 21 to discuss language she could use to promote school vouchers without generating as much resistance to the effort, according to the notes in her agenda.
“Frank has a 60 slide deck of the words to use and the words to lose regarding parental choice, vouchers, charter schools, teacher pay and all the other issues in education reform,” the notes say.
On July 10, Ms. DeVos met with a Republican state senator from Tennessee, Brian Kelsey, according to her calendar, to discuss the “federal government’s plans for school vouchers.” In her first weeks on the job, she also had a call with former Senator Phil Gramm, Republican of Texas. The topic was listed as “School Choice in Texas.”
According to the calendar, Ms. DeVos also met with Tim Keller and Richard Komer of the Institute for Justice, a conservative nonprofit that has joined lawsuits in Montana, Nevada and additional states to defend the ability of parents to use taxpayer-funded vouchers to cover tuition for their children to attend private religious schools. The goal of the meeting: “suggest a few areas where the Department could facilitate school choice efforts and offer the Sec. help in those areas.”
Mr. Komer said he had known Ms. DeVos for a decade and was glad to see her maintain her commitment to school choice.
No Profit in Betsy DeVos
O.K., we’re talking here about Trump University. I knew I couldn’t fool you forever. Cynics might wonder if DeVos has been going to the defense of for-profit colleges so quickly because she wants to please her boss. Who might not enjoy seeing a lot of headlines about greedy colleges that make promises they never intended to keep, being brought down by the forces of justice.
But let’s be positive. Perhaps we could be grateful that DeVos is giving us opportunities to bring up Trump University on a regular basis. As a sort of cautionary tale.
For instance, the Department of Education has stopped approving new fraud claims against for-profits, leaving a backlog of more than 87,000. Every time the number goes up, we could say, “This is even more than the number of students who complained about their loans for Trump University.”
If DeVos says what the country needs now is less regulation, we can recall that Trump University had instructors allegedly handpicked by Donald Trump himself, although it turned out that he’d never even met them.
