Betsy DeVos, the former Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE), took time to speak at the Moms For Liberty National Summit in Tampa, Florida, this past Saturday and sounded the call for the wholesale abolishing of the federal agency she had previously served.
“I personally think the Department of Education should not exist,” explained DeVos during the summit, as reported by the Florida Phoenix.
DeVos, who previously under the Trump Administration ran the education department, has made it a point to advocate for more school choices for the American child.
As part of the exclusive interview with the Daily caller News Foundation, DeVos stated that Republicans have called for the shrinking or outright elimination of the department for “many, many years.” However, she stated that taking logical steps like blocking grants to the states, an idea just recently put before Congress, could end up turning the tide and spawning a more feasible option to make the idea a reality.
“Just watching how the system has performed or not performed the last two years, I think makes this argument of shrinking the department to be much more potent,” explained DeVos to the outlet.
She laid out a strong five-point plan in order to reform education for Republicans in order to implement if the party can take the majority in Congress in the wake of the 2022 Midterm elections coming this November.
To go along with taking down the department, it was reported by the Daily Caller that her actual plan includes giving support to multiple pathways to post-k-12 education, restoring Title IX, and the reform of federal student aid. Educational freedom, however, which would let parents have a choice to send their kids to schools of their choice, is the former department head’s most important reform.
“The solution to that is to have policies that will actually allow the resources to follow the family, to follow the child, to wherever their family decides they’re going to learn best,” explained DeVos.
Recently, the Department of Education recently announced a National Parents and Families Engagement Council that seeks to discover “constructive ways to help families engage at the local level” with “listening sessions” to help students get past the pandemic.
Devos labeled this council as “laughable” to those at Fox News, stating that parents all over the country remain angry about how the system dealt with their kids and how out of touch with reality the “folks in Washington” have become for defending the system by using the FBI to investigate parents as domestic terrorists.
The former head of the education department joined up with over 20 speakers as part of the summit, which included Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Dr. Ben Carson, and Dr. James Lindsay.