Education Secretary Betsy DeVos appeared on CBS’s “60 Minutes” Sunday night and stumbled in answering questions that journalist Lesley Stahl asked during a pointed interview.
Stahl repeatedly challenged the education secretary, at one point suggesting that DeVos should visit underperforming public schools to learn about their problems. DeVos responded, “Maybe I should.” The secretary also said she is “not so sure exactly” how she became, as Stahl described her, “the most hated” member of President Trump’s Cabinet but believes that she is “misunderstood.”
These are just some of the things that DeVos said — or couldn’t answer — during the interview:
- She couldn’t say whether the number of false accusations of sexual assault on school campuses is lower than the number of actual rapes or assaults.
- Arming teachers “should be an option” for states and communities, she said, even though she couldn’t “ever imagine” her first-grade teacher, Mrs. Zorhoff, having had a gun.
- “We have invested billions and billions and billions of dollars from the federal level, and we have seen zero results,” DeVos said — a statement Stahl challenged.
- “I hesitate to talk about all schools in general because schools are made up of individual students attending them.”
- In reference to the #MeToo movement, she said she experienced moments decades ago that “today would just be viewed as unacceptable.”
DeVos, who rarely gives interviews to journalists, is a longtime school choice advocate who once said that traditional public education is “a dead end,” and she has made clear that her top priority as the nation’s education chief is expanding alternatives to traditional public schools. She is a champion of using public funds for private and religious school education, and critics say she is determined to privatize public education. DeVos has denied that.
Read the full story at the Washington Post
