https://www.frontpagemag.com/hostages-no-more/
I wasn’t happy with all of Donald Trump’s original cabinet choices, but I cheered his appointment of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education. The daughter-in-law of Amway founder Richard DeVos and the sister of Blackwater founder Erik Prince, she’s a philanthropist who developed over a period of decades into a deeply serious education expert and a leader of several major organizations promoting substantial education reform. With her husband, Dick, she awarded scholarships, was involved in mentoring, fought for school choice, and, in the year 2000, supported a school-choice initiative in their home state of Michigan. When it went down to defeat in a referendum, Dick, with Betsy’ encouragement, started his own highly regarded private high school, the West Michigan Aviation Academy. Then, in 2016, came Trump’s victory and a phone call from Jeb Bush, of all people, who asked whether she’d be interested in a Trump administration post.
DeVos was on the fence. All her activity as an education reformer had taken place at the state and local level. She believed in grassroots control, because she believed in the importance of diversity and experimentation, in different kinds of schools for kids with different needs, and fiercely opposed one-size-fits-all remedies imposed by clueless federal bureaucrats on kids who lived thousands of miles away from them.