ESSA & DeVos’ First 1,000 Days
November 13, 2019
In The 74, Carolyn Phenicie takes a look at the first thousand days of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ tenure, noting that among her detractors, her department’s “weak implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act” is among “her most egregious actions.” However, to her supporters, “weakening the federal hand in education is exactly what they wanted after the perceived overreach of the Bush-Obama years.” Senator Lamar Alexander, Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and a primary author of ESSA, praised DeVos in an emailed statement for implementing ESSA “well, on time, and as Congress intended—by restoring most decisions back to states and local school districts.”