Former Trump Education secretary lays out ‘unfinished business’ for new admin on school reforms

President-elect Donald Trump’s first Department of Education (DOE) secretary, Betsy DeVos, has been floated as one of the potential candidates for the position again. However, if she does not get the job, DeVos has some ideas about who would be a good fit to carry the mantle Trump started in 2017.

“There’s a whole host of Republican governors who have led on issues around at K-12 education, in particular, and in other cases, higher education,” DeVos told Fox News Digital in an interview.

“They have great backgrounds and could do a great, great job in carrying out the policies of a second Trump administration. Which I believe, as President Trump has said, should definitely include every effort to depower the federal agency and turn control and power back over to states, local, districts and parents.”

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Education Secretary Betsy DeVos speaks during a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing on the budget on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, March 26, 2019. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

GOP-dominated legislatures in Florida, Iowa, Arkansas and elsewhere passed bills significantly expanding school vouchers last year. 

On the campaign trail, Trump said one of the first things he’ll do is “closing up the Department of Education in Washington, D.C., and sending all education and education work it needs back to the states.”

DeVos said the budget and investments in education would not change, but through “block granting.”

“Let’s talk about eliminating the bureaucracy, not the budget, and ways in which that can be done,” DeVos said. “Very simply, block granting the money back to the states, so that it goes to states and ideally directly it to families who need it most.”

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Former President Donald Trump arrives for a campaign rally at Lancaster Airport on Nov. 3, 2024 in Lititz, Pennsylvania. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

During Trump’s first term, DeVos strongly advocated for school choice policies and expanding school voucher programs and tax credit scholarships to allow public funding to be used for private and religious school tuition.

She also rescinded federal guidance on the use of bathrooms by transgender students in schools, arguing it should be a state and local decision. 

DeVos scaled back federal oversight and programs in K-12 education, including the scope of civil rights investigations conducted by the DOE.

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Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos strongly advocated for school choice policies and expanding school voucher programs and tax credit scholarships to allow public funding to be used for private and religious school tuition. (iStock)

“This is unfinished business from the first term, when we introduced with President Trump’s support and urged a freedom, a tax credit freedom bill to establish a pool of funds that individuals could designate money to at the federal level, but it would go alongside what states are already doing,” DeVos said. 

“Many states have passed education freedom policies to support families making those choices in that state, and other states have not yet done that, but this would allow for kids in every state through scholarship granting organizations to experience more education, freedom and choices and options, and that is a really important piece that should be addressed. And I believe this new Congress is ready to jump into it,” she added.

On the contrary, President Biden increased funding for public schools, particularly in low-income areas, through the American Rescue Plan during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Throughout his presidency, Biden pushed for college student debt relief, despite being blocked by the Supreme Court.

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Biden’s Education Department is trying to push through a new federal rule in the final weeks before President-elect Trump takes over to provide additional student loan forgiveness for 8 million borrowers who face financial hardships. 

If finalized, the new rule would authorize student debt forgiveness on a one-time basis for people who the department considers to have at least an 80% chance of defaulting on loans based on a “predictive assessment using existing borrower data.”

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The rule would also allow people, including potential “future borrowers,” to apply for relief that will be awarded based on “a holistic assessment of the borrower’s hardship.”

“There is every argument for if the taxpayers are going to be funding student lending, there better be ways to oversee it and actually do it effectively and efficiently,” DeVos said. “And it has not been happening. It is a huge mess, and it needs to be rethought and re-examined, and frankly, the private sector, private sector lending needs to come back into it and be an option.”

Fox News Digital’s Alec Schemmel contributed to this report.