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Betsy DeVos left Washington 5 months ago. Her legacy is alive and well. - POLITICO

Betsy DeVos left Washington 5 months ago. Her legacy is alive and well. - POLITICO

Betsy DeVos left Washington 5 months ago. Her legacy is alive and well. - POLITICO
Jun 20, 2021 2 mins, 36 secs

On issues like charter schools and sexual misconduct, conservative lawmakers and activists have stepped in to preserve the work of Donald Trump’s education secretary.

It also made its mark on civics education by rejecting former President Donald Trump’s demands for promoting a rosier view of American history and “patriotic” education, by praising The New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project, which Trump has called “toxic propaganda.” Talk of school choice, a topic that DeVos championed throughout her tenure, has also been placed on the back burner.

“It's not a surprise that the Biden Education Department is doing precisely what they promised in the campaign, which is trying to undo just about everything that their predecessor did,” said Jeanne Allen, founder of the Center for Education Reform, which advocates for school choice.

And pandemic-spurred public school closures created the “clearest case I’ve seen for school choice in our lifetime,” Scott said in an address to rebut Biden’s first address to Congress.

Led by Nicole Neily, who also serves as president of national campus free speech organization Speech First, Parents Defending Education has been filing complaints against public school systems with the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights.

The group filed a complaint against Ohio’s Columbus City Schools in May, after it admitted in April 2021 that “Systemic racism … has existed for 175 years within the Columbus City Schools education system.” Parents Defending Education said in a statement that the admission of systemic racism “raises questions as to why Columbus City Schools continues to receive federal funds since discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin is a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”.

The complaint is similar to an Education Department probe launched under DeVos into Princeton University last summer after the school’s president said students there face “systematic racism” and that racism is “embedded” in the structures of the university.

He argued in a brief that the Education Department’s latest Title IX review announced in April was a threat to the rule and that the Biden administration is "openly hostile to the Final Rule,” making the department unfit to defend the rule in court.

A survey released by the American Federation for Children, which DeVos led before joining the Trump administration, in January found that 72 percent of K-12 parents who work full-time support school choice, and 79 percent support Education Freedom Scholarship legislation

The freedom scholarship measure, a favorite of DeVos, aimed to provide federal tax credits for donations to scholarship-granting organizations to pay for students to attend private schools or expand their public education options

But Allen said it is by no means an indication that support for charter schools and choice are dwindling — even with the Education Department’s “negativity.”

“The efforts that are ongoing at the department are attempts to not just reduce program funding, but to try to put what I'd call poison pills in regulatory language and guidance — push Departments of Education to be harder on who gets approved and doesn't,” she said in an interview, adding that “states have been adopting and expanding their own programs.”

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