After her disastrous 60 Minutes interview, where she failed to justify or back up any of her policies or beliefs about education, Betsy DeVos may be eager to prove herself competent and effective again. And in a way, she's succeeding: her goals even before becoming Secretary of Education was to undermine public schools, belittle teachers, and prop up student debt collectors. Now that she oversees the country's schools, she can more effectively push for those pet projects while also ripping the teeth out of the agency she runs.

Her latest target is the department's Office of Civil Rights, a body tasked with investigating claims of civil rights abuses in schools. Under DeVos, the Department of Education has found a way to completely avoid its duty, simply by inventing a rule that lets them opt out of it, in order to be more "efficient." As the New York Times reports:

Among the changes implemented immediately is a provision that allows the Office for Civil Rights to dismiss cases that reflect “a pattern of complaints previously filed with O.C.R. by an individual or a group against multiple recipients,” or complaints “filed for the first time against multiple recipients that” place “an unreasonable burden on O.C.R.’s resources.”

So far, the provision has resulted in the dismissal of more than 500 disability rights complaints.

Let's break this down. Under DeVos, the Department of Education has instituted a policy that allows them to outright dismiss claims that students' civil rights have been violated. And one of the criteria they're using is "this person has brought too many claims already." According to this rationale, DeVos would argue that laws and civil rights stop applying to individuals if they seek protection too many times. And by refusing to follow through on claims against "multiple recipients," the Education Department is essentially claiming that patterns of abuse or systemic violations don't exist: civil rights can only be violated by one person at a time.

DeVos reportedly was not a supporter of Donald Trump during his campaign, which is a sharp irony because she so perfectly distills so much about his administration. If you're in a vulnerable position, if someone with power and authority has the ability to abuse and take advantage of you, then she is dedicated to working against you. She's already made it clear that she's a dedicated opponent to students with disabilities: in October, the department rescinded more than 70 documents that outlined disabled students' rights. The move makes it exponentially more difficult for students and administrators to know what schools' obligations are, and this new move to throw out as many civil rights claims as possible is one more step in undermining the education and safety of vulnerable students.

The secretary of education post has long been occupied by a rogue's gallery of people focused on undermining public education and the authority of teachers. But in Betsy DeVos, the Department of Education may have it's first ever secretary who is unabashedly anti-student.