Serving as a cabinet secretary in any administration is demanding work. Serving in one of the most politically charged roles in the most contentious administration in recent memory is another matter entirely. Betsy DeVos did exactly that, spending nearly the full four years of the Trump administration leading the Department of Education and navigating some of the most difficult terrain any Education Secretary has faced.
Her confirmation in February 2017 was itself historic, requiring a tie-breaking vote from Vice President Mike Pence, the first time in American history that a vice president had been needed to confirm a cabinet nominee. From that moment, DeVos operated under a level of public scrutiny that few cabinet members have experienced. She remained.
During her tenure, she oversaw a department managing hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan programs, federal grants to K-12 schools, and oversight of higher education institutions across the country. She navigated the COVID-19 pandemic, working to distribute emergency education funding and address the massive disruptions to learning that the crisis caused for students at every level.
She also undertook significant regulatory work, revising Title IX guidance on campus sexual misconduct proceedings to ensure that accused students received due process protections, a move that generated both strong criticism and strong support depending on perspective. The revisions, finalized in 2020, represented the most substantial overhaul of Title IX regulations in decades.
DeVos also worked to expand the federal government’s support for school choice, consistently pushing for funding mechanisms that would allow Title I dollars to follow low-income students to the schools that best served them. While Congress did not adopt her most ambitious proposals, she kept the debate alive and positioned school choice as a central element of Republican education policy.
She resigned in January 2021 in the final days of the administration, citing the events of January 6th as incompatible with her continued service. That decision, made at personal and professional cost, reflected a line she was unwilling to cross. Her record over the preceding four years, whatever its controversies, stands as one of the most consequential in the department’s history.
