Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has clashed with the career employees at the department she has led for the last four years, but she had a request for them in a department-wide meeting Tuesday addressing the shift to the incoming Biden administration. "Let me leave you with this plea: Resist," she said, according to a recording of the virtual meeting obtained by Politico. "Be the resistance against forces that will derail you from doing what's right for students. In everything you do, please put students first — always."
DeVos has blamed agency bureaucrats for getting in the way of her policy initiatives, and "political appointees at the Education Department also sought to investigate and punish career employees who they suspected of leaking information to the press," Politico notes. She told Reason magazine in the fall that the Education Department "has caused more problems than it solved." So it's not clear what kind of "resistance" she hopes those employees put up to President-elect Joe Biden's to-be-named education secretary. The Education Department did not respond to Politico's request for comment on the remark.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
-
USC under fire for canceling valedictorian speechSpeed Read Citing safety concerns, the university canceled a pro-Palestinian student's speech
-
Florida teachers can 'say gay' under settlementspeed read The state reached a settlement with challengers of the 2022 "Don't Say Gay" education law
-
Biden administration to forgive $39B in student loan debt for 800K borrowersSpeed Read
-
Advocacy groups challenge Harvard's legacy admissions policySpeed Read
-
2 Michigan school districts ban backpacks after confiscating 4th gun this yearSpeed Read
-
Education Department to limit bans on transgender student athletes but allow exceptionsSpeed Read
-
UAE becomes 1st Middle Eastern country to mandate Holocaust education in schoolsSpeed Read
-
College admissions scandal mastermind sentenced to 3.5 years in prisonSpeed Read
