Lori Higgins

Detroit Free Press

As U.S. Secretary of Education, West Michigan native and billionaire Betsy DeVos will have wide latitude to set the agenda for federal education policy, including pushing for school choice. But how much power will DeVos wield?

Experts say she'll have very little power to mandate school vouchers, which allow taxpayer money to be used to send students to private schools. But she will have influence over other key issues, such as how civil rights complaints are handled and how colleges handle campus sexual assaults.

"She doesn't have that much power at all," said Brandon Wright, editorial director for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education reform advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C., and Ohio.

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Part of the reason, said Mike Addonizio, a professor in the college of education at Wayne State University, is that the federal government only provides about 10% of the revenue used to operate K-12 schools. In Michigan, a combination of other sources — including state and local funding — provides the largest bulk of school funding.

Another big piece of it is the Every Student Succeeds Act, the federal education law enacted in 2015 that governs K-12 schools in the U.S. That law "really gave a lot of power back to states and school districts," Wright said.

That means states decide how to identify failing schools, how to hold schools accountable and how to intervene with struggling schools. The U.S. Department of Education, which DeVos will oversee, must approve state plans for complying with the federal law. But again, he said, much will be left up to the states.

"Clearly the department will hold states accountable, but it will give them much greater leeway in interpreting the requirements of the law," Wright said.

"For her to have more power, there would have to be some new law passed," Wright said.

And that's what concerns Gary Miron, a professor of education at Western Michigan University. He worries that as the focus shifts to giving states and local districts more control, Congress might also give them more control on issues that have always been under federal direction, such as how special education students are educated. That could hurt some of the neediest students, Miron said, if that weakens the kind of programs special education students receive.

Rationally speaking, DeVos has limited power, Miron said. But, he said, "we have to recognize that not everything is rational now. Congress could turn around and reallocate resources to give her more control. We keep saying, 'No, that's not possible because that's not how things work.' We have to think about the irrational things."

Miron said that with more power in the hands of states, DeVos could use the influence she has gained over the years given the vast amount of money she and her family have donated to Republican politicians. DeVos has said she will not, for instance, mandate school vouchers on states. And she has said she and her husband will no longer donate to the Republican Party while she's secretary. But politicians at the state and local level might feel beholden to her because of her past donations, Miron said.

"She will expect a return on her investments," Miron said.

One of President Donald Trump's campaign promises was to invest $20 billion in federal dollars into providing vouchers for low-income students to attend private schools. But that would require a significant investment by states, something the federal government wouldn't be able to mandate.

Meanwhile, DeVos' ability to push for vouchers is limited by laws in individual states like Michigan, which bars them. It would take a constitutional amendment approved by Michigan voters to change that, and the most recent attempt — in 2000 — failed by a large margin.

"It’s ultimately a matter of state law," Addonizio said.

The education department's mission is "to ensure equal access to education and to promote educational excellence throughout the nation," according to the department's website. DeVos will also advise Trump on all issues related to federal education policies, programs and activities.

One area in which DeVos will have considerable influence: how aggressive the department's office of civil rights pursues complaints. That office handles complaints over student rights as it relates to race and ethnicity, sex and gender, and disability, said Kristi Bowman, an education law and policy expert at Michigan State University.

"There's a lot of variation, from one administration to another, in the approach that administration takes to staffing that unit and being more aggressive," Bowman said.

Under the Obama administration, the office issued controversial guidance over how colleges and universities address sexual assault allegations, and regarding how to handle lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students at the K-12 level. Under DeVos, it's unclear whether that guidance will remain.

Miron said he suspects the civil rights office will remain. "They'll just underfund it. We'll see fewer investigations."

Contact Lori Higgins: 313-222-6651 or lhiggins@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @LoriAHiggins