Mr. President: I rise in opposition to the nomination of Betsy DeVos to be our next Secretary
of Education.
This is one of the most important jobs in our government.
The Department of Education bears the responsibility for making sure that every child in America
has the opportunity to fulfill his or her potential.
Which means that the Secretary of Education has an enormous amount of power to shape our
country's future.
So this is not a job for amateurs.
President Obama's first Secretary of Education was Arne Duncan, who had spent seven and a
half years building a record of accomplishment as CEO of Chicago's public school system,
previous to which he had been the director of a mentoring program and the founder of
a charter school.
When Secretary Duncan stepped down, he was replaced by Dr. John King Jr., the recipient
of a doctorate in education administrative practice who had served as Deputy Secretary
under Duncan and who had previously been the education commissioner for New York State.
Each brought to the job a background in public education that informed their understanding
of what students, parents, teachers, and administrators need to succeed.
Which brings me to Betsy DeVos.
There were reasons to be skeptical about Mrs. DeVos's nomination right off the bat.
As my Republican colleague, Senator Collins of Maine, put it, "The mission of the Department
of Education is broad, but supporting public education is at its core."
Well, in Mrs. DeVos, President Trump sent us a nominee with no experience in public
education.
Mrs. DeVos has never been a public school superintendent, or a public school principal,
or a public school teacher.
She has never attended a public school.
She has never sent a child to a public school.
Mrs. DeVos has no formal background in education, no classroom experience, and no demonstrated
commitment to supporting public education whatsoever.
In fact, Mrs. DeVos has a long history of actively undermining public education.
She and her family have spent millions of dollars advocating for an ideology that would
steal funds from public schools in order to fund private and religious education.
Let's take a moment to talk about what that means.
Mrs. DeVos ran a political action committee called All Children Matter, which spent millions
in campaign contributions to promote the use of taxpayer dollars for school vouchers.
The argument was that these vouchers would allow low-income students to leave the public
school system and attend the private or religious school of their family's choice.
Mrs. DeVos has described this as "school choice," claiming that it would give parents
the chance to choose the best school for their children.
But that's just not how it works.
In reality, most school vouchers don't cover the full cost of private school tuition.
Nor do they cover additional expenses like transportation, school uniforms, and other
supplies.
Which means the vouchers don't create more choices for low-income families.
They simply subsidize existing choices for families who could already afford to pay for
private school.
As it happens, we have a real-life test case we can look at to determine whether Mrs. DeVos's
argument holds water.
Mrs. DeVos helped develop a voucher program for the state of Indiana.
And guess what happened.
Today, more than half of the students in the Hoosier State who receive vouchers never actually
attended Indiana public schools in the first place.
Which means their families were already in a position to pay for private schools – indeed,
vouchers are going to families earning as much as $150,000 a year.
Now, I'm sure these families appreciated the extra help.
But as of 2015, nearly half of Indiana children relied on free-and-reduced-price lunch programs.
These are the kids Mrs. DeVos claimed would be helped by school vouchers.
Instead, taxpayer dollars were taken away from public schools that remained the only
choice for these low-income families and given to families who could already afford private
school.
That's the reality of school vouchers.
And that's why, after Mrs. DeVos developed a similar proposal for a voucher program in
Pennsylvania – and an analysis projected that, just like in Indiana, the vouchers would
mostly benefit kids already enrolled in private schools – voters rejected it on multiple
occasions.
And yet, Mrs. DeVos and her family have continued their fight for school vouchers.
In fact, she's been such a fervent advocate that her political action committee, All Children
Matter, received the largest fine for violating election law in Ohio's state history – a
$5.3 million fine that, nearly a decade later, she still hasn't paid.
Why do this?
The evidence is clear that Mrs. DeVos's voucher obsession doesn't help low-income
families.
Quite to the contrary, it represents a serious threat to the public school system – a system
that 90 percent of our children rely on, but that Mrs. DeVos has described as "a dead
end."
The truth is that Mrs. DeVos's education advocacy isn't really about education at
all.
She's described her goal as follows: "advance God's kingdom."
Now, many families choose to send their children to religious schools, and many children receive
an excellent education at religious schools.
But it's the "schools" part that the Secretary of Education is supposed to focus
on.
And that's not the part that Mrs. DeVos and her family have put at the forefront of
their advocacy.
Mrs. DeVos spent a decade serving on the board of the Acton Institute, which seeks to infuse
religion into public life, beginning with public education.
She and her family have donated millions to promote the Institute's work, including
promoting ideas like this:
We must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools
until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality,
no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government.
Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious
order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.
Those are the words of Gary North, a Christian Dominionist for whom the Acton Institute has
served as a forum.
Of course, not everyone who believes in the potential of parochial schools shares his
view.
But this is the kind of stuff Mrs. DeVos and her family have spent millions and millions
of dollars promoting.
It's fine for someone to hold strong religious views, and to advocate for those views, and
to spend their family fortune encouraging others to adopt them.
But it's entirely fair to ask whether the mission of building a Bible-based social,
political, and religious order is compatible with the mission of the Department of Education.
So, yes, based on Mrs. DeVos's radical ideology, I was skeptical when her nomination was sent
to the Senate.
But I understand that others in this body may not have shared my discomfort.
Within this chamber, we have important differences when it comes to education policy, and, for
that matter, the appropriateness of using taxpayer funds to "advance God's kingdom."
And you know what?
That's fine.
But we all have the exact same responsibility when it comes to vetting the President's
cabinet nominees.
Each of us is called upon to determine not just whether we agree with the nominee's
ideology, but whether that nominee is free from relevant conflicts of interest, and,
critically, whether the nominee is competent – whether he or she is capable of doing
the job.
Making that call is our job.
And that's why we have the process we have.
It's why we ask to see nominees' financial information.
It's why we ask them to submit written answers to questionnaires about their experience and
their record.
And it's why we have them come to the Senate, sit in front of committees, and answer our
questions.
And, unfortunately, during her hearing, Mrs. DeVos proved beyond a shadow of a doubt not
only that her ideology is fundamentally incompatible with the mission of the Department of Education,
but that she is fundamentally incompetent to be its leader.
Throughout the hearing, she was unable to answer basic questions about her views on
important issues.
She was unfamiliar with basic concepts of education policy.
And she was unwilling to make basic commitments to continue the Department's work on behalf
of our most vulnerable children.
Let me give you one example of what I mean.
During my five minutes of questioning, I asked Mrs. DeVos to weigh in on the debate about
measuring growth vs. measuring proficiency.
And I'm going to take a few moments right now to make sure everyone here, and everyone
watching at home, understands what this debate is about, and just how central it is to the
future of education policy.
The difference between the two approaches is very easy to explain.
Let's say a 5th-grade teacher has a student who comes into the classroom reading at a
2nd-grade level.
Over the course of the school year, the teacher brings the student up to a 4th-grade level.
If we're measuring growth, we'd say, well, that teacher brought that student up two grade
levels in one year.
That teacher is a hero.
If we're measuring for proficiency, we'd say, well, that student is still reading below
grade level.
That teacher is a failure.
That's the difference between measuring growth and measuring proficiency.
It took me all of, what, 30 seconds to explain?
But I could spend all night talking about what this debate means for students, teachers,
school leaders, and our entire education system.
Everyone agrees that there should be accountability in our education system – accountability
for school systems, accountability for schools, accountability for classroom teachers.
We want to know that we're getting results.
This was the core idea behind all the standardized testing in No Child Left Behind.
The problem was that No Child Left Behind set up a system in which we assessed student
learning by measuring proficiency.
And as the law was implemented, all sorts of problems emerged with taking this approach.
For example: Teachers in Minnesota often tell me how measuring proficiency leads to what
they call a "race to the middle."
See, measuring proficiency only measures whether or not students are performing at grade level.
Teachers don't get credit for helping kids who are already above grade level perform
even better, and they don't get credit for helping kids who are way behind grade level
start to catch up.
It's a yes or no question: Did this student achieve proficiency, or not?
And a teacher's entire career could depend on how many of his or her students meet that
arbitrary goal.
So, under this system, teachers had a strong incentive to ignore all the kids at the top,
who were already going to meet proficiency, and all the kids at the bottom, who had no
chance of getting there in time for that year's test.
Instead, they were forced to focus all their energy on the students right above and right
below the benchmark.
One of the only things I liked about No Child Left Behind was the name.
By only measuring how many students met an arbitrary level of proficiency, we were leaving
behind the kids at the top and the kids at the bottom.
I can't overstate how central this issue is to education.
And I can't tell you how important it is to educators across America.
If you talk to any state education secretary, any district superintendent, any local school
board member, any school principal, any classroom teacher – heck, most parents – they will
have an opinion on measuring growth vs. measuring proficiency.
So, when Mrs. DeVos came before the HELP Committee, I asked for her opinion on this
extremely basic, extremely important question.
And she had no idea what I was talking about.
Let me be clear.
She wasn't reluctant to declare her opinion.
She wasn't trying to strike a middle ground.
She did not know what I was talking about.
We wouldn't accept a Secretary of Defense who couldn't name the branches of the military.
We wouldn't accept a Secretary of State who couldn't identify Europe on a map.
We wouldn't accept a Treasury Secretary who doesn't understand multiplication.
In fact, in nearly any circumstance, if a candidate for a job is asked a question that
basic and that important and simply whiffs on it the way Mrs. DeVos did, there's no
second question.
Just a "Thank you for your time, we'll let you know, and will you please send in
the next candidate?"
You know, earlier this year, the University of Minnesota hired a new head football coach.
I wasn't there for that interview.
But imagine if the first question a candidate was asked was as follows: "How many yards
does it take to get a first down?"
And imagine if that candidate answered as follows: "Thank you for the question, Mr.
Athletic Director.
I can pledge to you that I will work with you as hard as I can to make sure that we
get as many first downs as possible – leading, we hope, to touchdowns."
"That wasn't the question.
The question was: How many yards does it take to get a first down?"
"Thank you for the question.
I can tell you this, too.
I will look forward to working with you to prevent the other team from getting first
downs, also."
That's how basic my question to Mrs. DeVos was.
And that's how shocking it was that she simply didn't know enough about education
policy to answer it.
This inexplicable failure alone was enough for me to conclude that Mrs. DeVos lacked
the knowledge and understanding that should be a bare minimum for anyone seeking this
position.
But the entire hearing was a showcase for her lack of qualifications.
If any of my colleagues haven't had a chance to watch it, I urge them to do so before casting
a vote in favor of this nominee.
It was one of the most embarrassing scenes I've been witness to during my time in the
United States Senate.
In fact, I believe it may have been one of the most embarrassing performances by a nominee
in the history of the United States Senate.
Asked about the right of children with disabilities to get a quality public education, she didn't
know that this right is protected by a federal law, the Individuals with Disabilities Education
Act.
Asked about guns in schools, she suggested that maybe schools should keep them on hand
in case of grizzly bear attacks.
Asked about whether she would hold private and parochial schools that get taxpayer funding
to the same standard of accountability as public schools, she couldn't or wouldn't
say.
Asked about a family foundation that has donated millions of dollars to an organization promoting
conversion therapy for LGBT youth, she claimed she had no involvement.
Which is ridiculous.
Even if Mrs. DeVos's own role as Vice President of that foundation was a 13-year clerical
error, as she now claims, she herself has donated approximately $75,000 to support that
anti-LGBT organization's work.
None of these were difficult questions.
None of these were "gotchas."
And all of these failures took place during a single five-minute round of questioning
– because after that first round, the hearing was cut off, and our Chairman refused to allow
any further questioning.
By the way: I'd like to say a word about that move to cut off questioning.
I have great respect for the Chairman of the HELP Committee.
But his decision to end that hearing was wrong.
And his rationale was simply false.
Our Chairman insisted that, because both Secretary Duncan and Secretary King had been subjected
to only a single round of questions, there was precedent to deny the minority a second
round of questioning of Mrs. DeVos.
That simply isn't so.
First of all, as I discussed earlier, both Arne Duncan and John King were experienced
education professionals with long records of public service.
Even if Republican members had occasion to disagree with them on matters of policy, there
was no question that their backgrounds had prepared them for the job of Secretary of
Education.
And that's the bigger point here.
There were no further questions.
In both of those cases, committee members weren't denied the opportunity for a second
round of questioning.
They simply chose not to engage in one.
Indeed, when I asked the Congressional Research Service, they confirmed that those hearings
did not establish the precedent our Chairman claimed.
Instead of allowing us to question Mrs. DeVos further, the Chairman invited us to submit
additional questions in writing, presumably so that she could get some help from her Trump
administration handlers in answering them.
But even so, her written responses only served to further expose her own lack of understanding
of how education policy affects Americans.
For example: I asked Mrs. DeVos, in writing, about the effect of trauma and adverse childhood
experiences on education.
This is a subject I've been interested in for a long time.
A lot of kids in America live in extreme poverty.
Some may have a parent in prison, or a parent who has passed away.
These kids may also experience physical abuse and neglect.
There may be drug or alcohol abuse taking place in the house.
Some have witnessed domestic violence in their homes, or street violence in their neighborhoods.
Some have seen siblings shot and killed right in front of them.
Decades of research have shown that the trauma that comes from such adverse childhood experiences
actually change a kid's brain chemistry, and affect their behavioral development, their
mental and physical health, and their chances to succeed in society long-term.
But research has also shown that these challenges can be overcome – and the kids who do overcome
them are some of the most resilient you'll ever meet.
Our public education system was designed to give these kids a shot, but teachers and administrators
often lack the resources they need to give these kids the chance they deserve.
And because Mrs. DeVos's crusade for school vouchers would further rob our public schools
of these limited funds, I wanted to know her thoughts on this important subject.
Mrs. DeVos's answer was brief and superficial.
She wrote that that she had heard that children are impacted by trauma, and that trauma can
cause difficulties in a child's education.
That was it.
Was she unfamiliar with the literature?
Was she unwilling to acknowledge that poor kids face special challenges?
Would she be remotely interested in addressing these challenges as Secretary of Education?
I guess we'll never know.
I also asked Mrs. DeVos, in writing, about her vision for education in rural communities,
where nearly 10 million American children attend schools that often struggle with teacher
shortages and transportation challenges.
How would her "school choice" agenda help them?
In her response, she pointed to online schools, which are often run by for-profit companies,
many with questionable records.
In fact, one of the country's biggest online schools recently agreed to a $168.5 million
settlement in California for allegedly defrauding families.
But even online schools that aren't out to rip off students often wind up failing
them.
A 2015 Stanford study showed that, on average, kids in online schools lose the equivalent
of 72 days of learning in reading, and 180 days of learning in math.
And that's for each 180-day school year.
Which means that kids in online schools can fall up to a full year behind in math.
And, of course, many rural communities lack reliable broadband access in the first place.
This was yet another answer that wasn't an answer at all, yet another piece of evidence
that Mrs. DeVos simply isn't up to this job.
Mr. President: Like many Americans, I have serious concerns about many aspects of the
Trump administration's agenda.
Still, I believe that, as a United States Senator, it is my job to evaluate each nominee
on his or her own merits.
That's why I voted for nominees like Secretary Mattis and Secretary Chao, even though I disagree
with them on some important issues.
General Mattis, for example, has nearly half a century of military service under his belt,
and he has earned the respect of leaders on both sides of the aisle.
And I believe he will be a much-needed voice of reason on the Trump administration's
foreign policy team.
Ms. Chao has a lengthy background in public service, including as Secretary of Labor and
Deputy Secretary of Transportation.
And I believe she will bring significant and valuable experience to her important role.
I may well take issue with the decisions they make and the agenda they implement as members
of President Trump's cabinet.
But, at the very least, each illustrated during their confirmation hearings that they have
a basic understanding of the issues they'll be responsible for dealing with.
Mrs. DeVos is different.
I've heard from Minnesotans about many of President Trump's nominees, but the outcry
over this nomination far surpasses anything else.
My office has received more than three thousand calls about this nominee.
A grand total of twelve of those calls were in favor of her confirmation.
Additionally, we've received more than 18,000 letters and emails.
And, again, the overwhelming majority of them have urged me to oppose this nomination.
For example: A woman from Brainerd, Minnesota wrote to say she'd never contacted one of
her representatives before, and didn't consider herself to be very political – in fact,
she was neither a Democrat nor a Republican.
But she has a daughter in 2nd grade and a son beginning kindergarten in the fall, and
she wanted me to vote against Betsy DeVos.
"How," she asked, "is someone who has never had any experience in public education
supposed to competently preside over it?"
A mother of two public school students in Faribault, Minnesota wrote of Mrs. DeVos,
"As I watched her during the hearing, I was in disbelief that she would be appointed
to such an important position."
Another constituent from Warren, Minnesota wrote, "This woman is so unqualified, it's
scary."
Last week, I went to dinner with Vice President Mondale.
Afterwards, he took me into the kitchen to greet some of the men and women who worked
at the restaurant.
And one of the guys in the kitchen – not a teacher, not an education advocate, just
a guy who was washing dishes – grabbed me and said, "Please vote against DeVos."
There's a reason why this nomination has been met with such overwhelming resistance
on the part of the American people.
And I know I'm not the only one who's heard it.
In fact, two of my Republican colleagues and fellow HELP Committee members, Senator Collins
and Senator Murkowski, have stepped forward to announce that they cannot vote for his
nominee.
They don't agree with me on every aspect of education policy.
But they saw the same hearing I did.
And, like me, they saw a nominee who simply does not understand the needs of the students
our Secretary of Education is supposed to serve.
I'll let my colleagues speak for themselves as to the reasons why they'll be joining
me in voting against this nominee.
But I'd like to close by asking a few questions of my colleagues who are still considering
a vote in her favor.
If Mrs. DeVos's performance didn't convince you that she lacks the qualifications for
this job, what would have had to happen in that hearing in order to convince you?
If you cannot bring yourself to vote against this nominee, is there anyone President Trump
could nominate for any position who you could vote against?
And if we cannot set party loyalty aside long enough to perform the essential duty of vetting
the President's nominees, what are we even doing here?
Mr. President: The Constitution gives us that power to reject cabinet nominations specifically
so that we can prevent fundamentally ill-equipped nominees like Betsy DeVos from assuming positions
of power for which they are not qualified.
Let's do our job.
I yield the floor.
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