Betsy DeVos is not qualified to be secretary of education

Betsy DeVos has no relevant experience as an educator; she did not attend or send her children to public school. She is not a teacher and has no degrees in Education.

Instead DeVos is a right-wing voucher and charter school activist whose numerous projects include the disastrous effort to spread charters in Detroit, which failed to increase student achievement while allowing charters to operate with little accountability or oversight.

Our young people are drowning in student debt. Betsy DeVos is unfit and unqualified to manage student loan programs and through them America's future.

Mrs. DeVos supports guns in schools. Not only does she want to put our children's education at risk, she is willing to put their lives at risk as well.

DeVos’ record on civil rights is as appalling as her record on education. She has funded a number of anti-LGBTQ organizations that oppose marriage equality.5 She was also supportive of the legal case to overturn affirmative action in Michigan that went all the way to the Supreme Court and resulted in sweeping limits on race-based admissions policies at universities across the country.6

Equal access to high-quality education is one of the cornerstone promises of our democracy. We have a long way to go and much work to do before it’s a promise that is reliably and consistently fulfilled for children of color, children whose first language is not English and children living in poverty. Putting Betsy DeVos at the helm of the Department of Education puts the promise itself at risk.