Lori Higgins and Kathleen Gray

Detroit Free Press

Betsy DeVos, the wealthy Republican activist appointed to be the next secretary of education for the U.S., will either be a strong fighter for the education of kids or destroy public education.

That about sums up the strong opinions about President-elect Donald Trump’s decision Wednesday to appoint DeVos to the highest education role in the nation. School choice and charter advocates praised her appointment. Union officials, Democratic activists and public school advocates slammed it.

DeVos is “an inspired choice,” Dan Quisenberry, president of the Michigan Association of Public School Academies, a charter school advocacy group, said in a news release.

“Betsy DeVos has been a champion for schoolchildren for decades, always putting their needs ahead of everything else,” Quisenberry said.

John Austin, the president of the State Board of Education in Michigan, disagreed on DeVos’ record.

“It’s like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse, and hand-feeding it schoolchildren,” he said. “Devos’ agenda is to break the public education system, not educate kids, and replace it with a for-profit model.”

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Sen. David Knezek, D-Dearborn Heights, said “the fact that she now is going to have a platform to do that on a national level should be of great concern to everyone in this country.”

DeVos is a polarizing figure in education circles because of her strong support for school choice and charter schools. Some critics have said advocates like her push school choice with little regard for the quality of options parents have.

She and other advocates believe strongly that parents should be able to decide where their kids go to school, and that kids shouldn’t be trapped in failing schools. But critics say choice advocates ignore the need for quality options, say charters have siphoned money away from traditional public schools and point to data that show charter schools aren’t performing any better, and in some cases are performing worse, than their counterparts.

In 2000, DeVos and her husband, Dick, led a failed petition drive to institute a voucher system in Michigan that would allow parents to use public money to send their children to private schools. The state constitution prohibits such use of public funds.

Voters overwhelmingly rejected the proposal. But a similar plan is the centerpiece of Trump’s education plan. He wants to spend $20 billion in federal funding now being spent on other things — and expects states to kick in even more — to provide to pay $12,000 in private school tuition for every high-poverty child in the country.

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The Devoses are big Republican donors, heavily endorsing candidates that back school choice and charter schools.

Gary Naeyaert, executive director of the Great Lakes Education Project, a school choice and charters lobbying group that Betsy DeVos founded, said Trump is a strong supporter of “refocusing education decisions away from D.C. and into the states. And he’s a strong proponent of comprehensive school choice.”

“These are things she strongly believes in and has for decades,” Naeyaert said.

Gov. Rick Snyder praised the appointment.

“Betsy’s appointment will mean great things for Michigan and for children around the nation as she takes her no-nonsense commitment to empowering parents to the highest levels in Washington,” he said.

Her work, though, has hurt public schools, say people like David Hecker, president of the American Federation of Teachers-Michigan, a union for teachers and other school employees.

“I can’t imagine a worse pick,” Hecker said. “I think the person selected should be pro-education, but she wants to dismantle public education. She has had some success in Michigan, not because she has any expertise, but because she is rich.”

“She has been given a cabinet position for which she is eminently unqualified,” said Paula Herbart, president of a Michigan Education Association local that represents school employees in 14 Macomb and Wayne county school districts.

Herbart predicted that under DeVos, more money will be diverted from public schools to charter schools run by for-profit companies and private schools.

“Public schools will lose funding in dramatic ways,” she said.

And she predicts the private schools and charter schools will educate fewer of the students who are the most difficult and costliest to educate — students with special education needs and at-risk students.

Charter schools now have fewer special education students than traditional public schools, with the difference between the two most dramatic in the state’s urban areas.

Lt. Gov. Brian Calley, though, praised the appointment in a news release, saying the announcement marked “an exciting day for children,” Calley has been an advocate for students with special education needs.

“Betsy’s nomination shows that President-elect Trump is serious about building an education system that puts kids first and parents in the driver’s seat. Creating an education system that works to help all children excel remains a priority of mine and I look forward to working with Betsy on these efforts in her new role.”

DeVos’s role will be critical as the nation’s schools implement a new federal education law, called the Every Student Succeeds Act, which Congress passed last year. That law replaces the much-maligned No Child Left Behind Act and puts more power in the hands of states to determine how to identify schools that need improvement and what to do about those schools.

DeVos “will have the opportunity to continue our nation’s upward trajectory by working to ensure that students are given the opportunities they need to succeed academically, and that schools and institutions are responsible for the success of all students,” said Amber Arellano, executive director of the Education Trust-Midwest, an education advocacy and policy group.

But Arellano said DeVos also has the potential to undermine progress “by diverting resources from the young people who most need them, or by failing to uphold the federal government’s responsibility to protect the needs and interests of all students, especially the most vulnerable.”

Contact Lori Higgins: 313-222-6651, lhiggins@freepress.com or @LoriAHiggins. Staff writer Ann Zaniewski contributed to this report.