Two years ago, Jonathan Clark was sending his four school-age kids to four different schools in Detroit.

“We were driving 200 miles a week just to and from school,” he said. His three oldest – all girls, ages 14 to 16 – were enrolled at charters, privately run schools funded by the government that promise better educational outcomes.

Clark was able to send his kids to schools all over the city because of school choice, the policy that allows kids to get educated outside their home district. But Clark said the conditions at these charter schools were no different from what’s typical of a public school in Detroit: a lack of resources needed to educate students, high teacher turnover, and low test scores.

“These are all things they give bad marks to DPS [Detroit public schools] on,” he said, “but charters are doing the same.”

That’s why Clark is alarmed by Donald Trump’s nomination of Betsy DeVos to lead the US Department of Education.

DeVos, a billionaire and conservative activist from the state, has been one of the strongest defenders in Michigan of expanding charter schools and choice.

DeVos and her husband, Dick, have long been a force in education policy efforts in Michigan, as well as other sensitive political issues – such as the Michigan legislature’s 2012 decision to pass right-to-work legislation. The DeVoses have contributed at least $7m to state lawmakers and Michigan’s GOP party – including support for a failed $5m effort to pass a pro-school-voucher voter referendum in 2000.

Public education advocates who oppose DeVos’s nomination point to Michigan’s education record – particularly in Detroit, where nearly half of students attend charters.

Since a quarter-century ago, charter advocates have pursued an agenda that has included a lift on the cap for how many can open in the state, as well as an expansion of school choice. Along the way, the state’s academic performance has dropped, and Detroit has probably felt the biggest impact.

Though charter advocates point to studies that suggest student gains have been made at charters, the city’s disconnected array of schools has developed into a frenetic status quo. Just this year, the district has teetered on the edge of bankruptcy, prompting teachers facing potential payless work days to stage mass protests, and a federal lawsuit is now attempting to assert a constitutional right to literacy – an argument couched in the dismal performance scores of Detroit students.

What’s more, the state’s policies and regulation of charters has been so lax, critics routinely refer to the city’s educational landscape as the “wild west”. Indeed, a federal audit this year noted Michigan’s charter school law does not include provisions for regulating conflict-of-interest issues. The state also allows for-profit charters to be established, a practice prohibited elsewhere.

Trump stands with Betsy DeVos after their meeting at the main clubhouse at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Photograph: Mike Segar/Reuters

Since 1990, Detroit’s population has dropped nearly 35%, while its school district’s attendance has plummeted nearly 75% – a signal of the proliferation of charters and use of choice in the city.

The situation in Michigan is such that even charter advocates criticize the state’s approach – and DeVos’s devotion to maintaining it.

“It doesn’t matter that charter schools aren’t giving any of the things they promised 22 years ago,” said Stephen Henderson, a Detroit native and editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press, who, along with his two children, attended charters. “She ... and her family funds any effort to block any changes or accountability or standards that would perhaps produce better results for us.”

But the pick underscored the polarizing views of DeVos. In her home state, Michigan’s governor and attorney general echoed Trump’s remarks about her qualifications.

Dan Quisenberry, president of the Michigan Association of Public School Academies, downplayed criticisms of her background, saying her business experience and previous role as the Michigan GOP chairwoman showed she could lead a large organization and handle political issues.

“Betsy is a person who will put kids before adults,” he said. “She’s going to put students and parents ahead of politics.”

Michigan indeed has some high-performing charter schools, including in Detroit. Many supporters point to a 2013 Stanford study that found charter students in the state learned at a faster rate than those in public schools, with two months of gains, or three months in Detroit. Still, the study found that slightly more than half of Detroit charter schools failed to perform “significantly better” in math and reading than counterparts, some even worse.

This summer, charter school advocates – including DeVos’s group, the Great Lakes Education Project – agreed to some additional accountability measures as part of a $617m investment to overhaul the governance of Detroit public schools. Schools must now be assessed regularly, and new schools accredited.

But a provision to create a commission overseeing Detroit schools was stripped from the legislation after intense lobbying by charter advocates and DeVos.

“What they feared was the accountability,” Henderson, 46, said.

DeVos – whose father-in-law founded Amway, a marketing company that previously settled tax fraud accusations for $25m – has long leveraged her wealth to target Republicans who have not boosted her education agenda. After the commission was derailed, DeVos donated $1.45m to state Republican lawmakers over a two month period.

Henderson said GOP lawmakers had told him that in the runup to the decision to axe the Detroit commission, DeVos explicitly stated that she wouldn’t donate to their campaign efforts if they didn’t flip their votes on the issue.

Trump’s transition team declined to make DeVos available for an interview and did not provide comment for this story.

Quisenberry said critics – namely, teachers’ unions – who point to DeVos’ political influence usually “are involved very much in the same influence on the other side”

“What the [Detroit commission] was about was whose political influence was going to win out,” he said. “The teachers’ union was very involved.”

Clark believes the commission would have addressed the distribution and quality of of schools in the city - in his neighborhood, there is just one operational school for 3,000 kids.

“If schools in our neighborhood were open, and up to standards, and producing a quality educational experience, then we wouldn’t have had to go to four different schools all over the city,” Clark said.

Clark now sends his three older kids to private school. But he knows that is off the table for many other parents in the city, where 40% of residents live below the poverty line.

“What about the parents who aren’t in that position?”



