US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos came into the Education Department with a bold vision: that parents should be able to send their kids to school wherever they wanted, by way of government-funded vouchers.
Nine months later, she’s made little progress on that goal. But her Education Department has made other, quieter changes that affect millions of students.
Many of those changes involve rolling back Obama-era regulations. It’s now harder for recent graduates of for-profit colleges to get their loans forgiven. Transgender students know the federal government isn’t backing them up as they fight to use the facilities that match their gender identity rather than the sex assigned to them at birth. And on college campuses, survivors of sexual assault wonder how seriously the Education Department is taking their claims.
So while Congress rejected DeVos’s proposed cuts of $9 billion to the Education Department, and with it, her strategy to implement school choice programs nationwide, it doesn’t mean she’s powerless. By rescinding Obama-era policies, DeVos has made an immediate mark.
Read more at Vox: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/2/16229474/devos-erasing-obamas-education-legacy