The Daily Signal - #318: Betsy DeVos on Giving States More Power in Education

Episode Date: October 13, 2018

Betsy DeVos received heaps of scorn from the left when she became education secretary, but since taking office last year, she’s accomplished much—and given a good deal of power back to the states. In this episode, Rob Bluey, our editor in chief, sits down with DeVos to talk about the progress being made. We also talk to Morgan Walker about what it’s like to be at a major Trump rally.Also on today's show:• Saudi officials prepare to admit to the killing of a missing journalist, as the U.S. considers punitive options.• Sen. Elizabeth Warren takes that long-awaited DNA test and finds she's only 1/1024th Native American. But that doesn't stop her from asking President Trump to cough up $1 million for charity.• Florida panhandle struggles in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael.• A case of fetal homicide raises the question: Is it life, or isn't it?• A biological male claims the championship title in women's track cycling, giving us a glimpse into what transgenderism means for female athletes.The Daily Signal podcast is available on the Ricochet Audio Network. You also can listen on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast app. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts.If you like what you hear, please leave a review or give us feedback. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I'm Jenny Maltabano. And I'm Daniel Davis. Betsy DeVos received heaps of scorn from the left when she became education secretary. But since taking office last year, she's accomplished loads of... of good for American kids and families. In this episode, Rob Blewey, our editor-in-chief, sits down with DeVos to talk about the progress being made. Plus, we'll talk to Morgan Walker about what it's like to be at a major Trump rally. But first, we'll cover a few of the top headlines. Well, the story about a missing Saudi journalist is still developing, but CNN reports that

the Saudi government is preparing to admit that Jamal Khashoggi was killed during an interrogation that went wrong. Keshagi is a Washington Post columnist and longtime critic of the Saudi royal family. He disappeared two weeks ago after walking into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. Turkish officials say they feared that a Saudi hit team had killed and dismembered him inside the consulate. According to CNN, the forthcoming report will say the operation was carried out without clearance and that those involved will be held responsible. Saudi Arabia at first denied any involvement in his disappearance, but U.S. officials pressed the Saudi royal family, and President Trump sent Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on his way to Riyadh.

Administration officials are discussing potential action to take against the Saudis, and that may include downgrading diplomatic relations as well as sanctions against Saudi officials. Senator Elizabeth Warren has faced several scandals over her repeatedly claiming to be Native American. Warren controversially claimed to be Native American when applying for jobs at different colleges, including Harvard. She recently took a DNA test and the results are in. The DNA company says that Warren is about one-one-thousin Native American. President Trump often refers to Warren as Pocahontas when giving speeches. And as of this week, President Trump denies making a pledge to pay a charity $1 million if she took a test and the results showed Native American heritage.

Well, some residents of the Florida Panhandle are still struggling without power a week after Hurricane Michael. In the hardest hit parts, power lines are down, transformers are destroyed, and some 371,000 residents remained without electricity. The storm's national death toll reached 19 over the weekend. President Trump was in Florida on Monday to assess the damage. A sad story out of Wisconsin has finally come to an end. A 45-year-old man has been sentenced to 22 years behind. bars for committing fetal homicide. After spending nearly 10 years on the run, Manish Kumar Patel has faced justice for putting an abortion-inducing drug into his girlfriend's drink, which caused her

to tragically miscarry soon after. Well, history just keeps moving toward progress. Actually, you may not be saying that right now if you're a female athlete. On Sunday, a biological male claimed the title of a woman's cycling championship. Rachel McKinnon, a biological male, teaches at the College of Charleston, took the gold at the Masters track Cycling World Championships in Los Angeles for a cycling sprint for women ages 35 to 39. He celebrated the feed on Twitter saying, quote, first transgender woman world champion dot dot, dot, ever. Earlier this year, McKinnon was quoted in USA Today arguing in favor of allowing transgender people to compete with athletes of the gender they identify with, despite their biological

difference. McKinnon said, quote, by catering to cisgender people's views, that furthers transgender people's oppression. Although I can't help but feel like the only people being oppressed right now are the women who took silver and bronze, but I'm a man, so I leave that to you, Jenny. I'm going to stay out of that one. Up next, our editor-in-chief, Rob Blewey sits down with Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. Are you looking for quick conservative policy solutions to current issues? for Heritage's weekly newsletter, The Agenda. Each Tuesday in the Agenda, you will learn what issues Heritage Scholars

on Capitol Hill are working on, what position conservatives are taking, and links to our in-depth research. The agenda also provides information on important events happening here at Heritage that you can watch online, as well as media interviews from our experts. Sign up for the agenda on heritage.org today.

Secretary DeVos, thanks so much for joining the Daily Signal. It's a pleasure, Rob. Glad to be here. We appreciate you coming back. We had the opportunity to sit down and chat recently at the Ronald Reagan building. Here we are today at Heritage Foundation Presidents' Club meeting. I want to begin by asking you, for the past five decades, we have seen the federal government's involvement and education just increase, increase, and increase. Now, under the Trump administration, you've taken some steps to restore some of that control back to local communities. Can you outline some of the highlights?

Yes, I'd be happy to. It started with rolling back a number of regulations that were very broad overreaches on the part of the former administration. But it also goes to the implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act, which Congress passed in the end of 2015, but it's really only getting implemented this year. And I think that the Democrats were counting on Hillary being in the White House because they in the previous administration passed or wrote a whole bunch of regulations in addition to the actual statute that we're going to place undue and overreach burdens on states. So that was all rescinded, rolled back right at the start of this administration. And we are on the proactive side of things pointing out to states and local communities the inherent flexibilities that Congress wrote into that statute.

So very important opportunities that we're urging states and communities to take advantage of. We've produced a parent guide to, again, bring the focus back to these are parents' decisions, and parents have to be integrally involved in these discussions. Well, I know one of the issues that goes alongside that is school choice and giving parents the flexibility to choose the best situation for their children. Talk about what the administration is doing with regard to school choice. Sure, and I should have mentioned on your previous question, the extension or the broadening of 529 savings plans, which of course, right.

Of course, provides a huge opportunity for families to take advantage of for now K-12 education as well. And as we are continuing to look at ways to complement what the states are doing, so states really have to take the lead on this and policies within each state, They're now over, I think, 54 different choice programs that have been implemented in states and over a half million students taking advantage of them. But we have to look for ways not for the federal government to step in and in any way take over what states are doing. But anything the federal government does should, number one, not be a mandate. And number two, complement or have the potential to complement and augment what states are doing.

Well, one of the reasons that parents like that flexibility is sometimes the concern about what their students, their children are learning in schools. And we've seen recently some polling to indicate that socialism is on the rise in terms of a belief system that many young people seem to be clamoring for. And you even see it in some of the democratic politicians in our country. Do you believe this is a cause of the education system and some of the beliefs that are being taught to students? Or is there another factor why they are gravitating toward such a destructive force? like socialism? Well, I think it's really a combination of things. I think number one, students aren't getting the kind of foundation in civics and government that I recall getting as a student in K-12 education. And they're coming then into higher education without the ability to, without

the background to even know and understand competing ideas, and then without the ability to discuss and debate them. I recall visiting a classroom not too long ago where one of the teachers was wearing a shirt that said, find your truth. Suggesting that, of course, truth is a very fungible and mutable thing instead of focusing on the fact that there is objective truth, and part of learning is actually pursuing that truth. So roll it back. There is a very important need for us to be able to, for students to know the foundations of our country, and the ideas around which our country was formed, and to then have the ability to discuss and debate those ideas freely

on their K-12 campuses and on their higher-ed campuses. Well, that's so true. As a father, myself, my son's in fourth grade, and he's learning about Virginia history right now, and so far so good, but it's really important, I think, to have that foundation to teach our children about our history and founding fathers. Now, you mentioned higher ed. I want to ask you about that,

because under your leadership, you have tried a few things to really make improvements in the higher ed environment, can you outline what the Trump administration's priorities are when it comes to higher education? Certainly. Well, this administration is very focused on expanding the pathways to higher education. We've had an almost singular focus for decades on four-year college or university as being the only path to a successful adult life. We know that not to be true. We know today there are 6.7 million jobs going unfilled that requires some kind of learning beyond high school. and yet there's a mismatch. Students aren't finding them out about these opportunities

and they aren't pursuing them because everything is very siloed when it comes to post-secondary education. We are focused on expanding those pathways, on reforming accreditation and other regulations that really have constrained higher ed across the board from innovating in the higher education arena. I talk with those who have been innovators in higher ed, and they say the biggest impediment is the antiquated accreditation system and all of the regulations surrounding that.

We're going to be undertaking rulemaking in that regard, and we're going to continue to push and encourage the opportunities that these creative individuals have to meet students where they're at and meet them for the needs of the 21st century. Well, and on that note, final question for you today is regarding college costs, because we hear about student debt and all the issues that they face once they get a degree. What is the Trump administration doing and are there innovative things that you've seen in higher ed where you can address some of these issues when it comes to the high costs of a higher education? Well, one of the things that we're doing is taking the framework for federal student aid and modernizing it. We're calling it,

NextGen FSA, and we have taken, first of all, the FAFSA application and put it on a mobile device. You can now complete your FAFSA form on your smartphone, and we're going to be continuing to add more relevant information to that app. So you'll be able to know exactly what your student loan outstanding balance is. You will be reminded along the way of options you have for repayment to encourage you to take responsibility for doing so. You will be able to access the college scorecard, which is going to have programmatic data for all colleges and universities. So you can ahead of time determine whether you want to pursue a specific program based on what the results are for students that have pursued that program. So that plus a lot of other information that's going to be at your fingertips, hopefully will help cultivate a lot more financial literacy around higher ed and the costs associated with that.

And then on the other side of things, again, opening up the opportunities for creativity and innovation in higher education is going to continue to change the cost calculations. Right. My visit to Georgia Tech a couple weeks ago gave a very current example of that. They have implemented a Masters of Computer Science program, which they were hesitant to do because they felt it was going to bring some perhaps negative implications to their on-campus programs. Actually, what happened was they have several thousand students who will be graduating with their master's in computer science. They've been able to take their classes and do.

the programming as it worked for their schedules and doing it a master's all for about $7,000. Well, thank you for sharing that story. It's the stories like that that we like to highlight at the Daily Signal and we appreciate you taking the time to speak with us today. Thanks, Rob. It's a pleasure. Do conversations about the Supreme Court leave you scratching your head? Then subscribe to SCOTUS 101, a podcast breaking down the cases, personalities, and gossip at the Supreme Court. And we're back with Jenny, but also with Morgan Walker, a digital special. at the Heritage Foundation with the Daily Signal. Both of you had the privilege, joy, honor of attending a Trump rally last week. I've never been to a Trump rally, and I'm really jealous of you guys. Tell us what it was like. Was it huge? Was it awesome? Was it big league?

It was great. You know, Morgan can tell you more, but she's been to a couple of Trump rallies before. This was my third. Her third. Her third rally. We had interesting experiences getting to the rally. I don't know if you want to explain what happened. That we did. So we did have a tough time getting there. First of all, we had to deplane because guess what? A fire extinguisher exploded. Who would have thought that would happen?

On the plane? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the poisonous gas was covering all of our bags. It was quite an adventure. So we went through all that to finally get to the Trump rally, get there two minutes before they let us in.

And the people in Ohio were super nice. I really have never been in like a crowd of people who are that genuine. And everyone is just so pumped, so excited. They're probably what, what, Jenny, 5,000 people maybe outside waiting to see the president. So they had a, they had a like a jumbo screen, Jumbotron out there. Was this like a big football stadium or basketball? No, it was a barn, essentially. It was on a fairground.

Fairground in Ohio. And it was cool. was that they had chain link fence, so people who couldn't get tickets or miss the cutoff to come in, they were just lined up hundreds of people outside the venue. It was cool as the president could kind of see them, and he kept referencing them. But Morgan touched on something really important. The people there were so nice. Even though we were in media and they always make this big deal about how contentious it is between Trump and his supporters in the media, they could not have been more friendly and were willing to talk to us and joked around with us.

And that was a great experience as well. Right. It was super refreshing because if you know, any of our listeners have been following what's been going on, especially with Kavanaugh, all we've been covering really are just really divisive protests lately. And so it was really wonderful to go to Middle America and see all of these people who, who really, one, want the president to achieve great things. And two, are really just tired of how the media is covering them. And especially, you know, they were talking about how dishonest the media is, especially in regards to Kavanaugh.

So it was really interesting to see what the media isn't covering. I will say, Daniel, two of the biggest applause lines were about Brett Kavanaugh, and then also President Trump, and I wrote it down, he said Republicans believe in the rule of law, not the rule of the mob. And we've seen that a lot of the news recently, too. And people just went crazy for that line. And when we were talking to people, we probably talked to probably 40, 45 attendees, and that was mainly what we got, was they were tired of,

mob-like behavior. They were also tied. One thing, Jenny asked them how they felt about how the media was portraying then. And the thing that we heard the most was they don't think the media portraying Trump supporters accurately. And the president touched on that.

Even in his 60 Minutes interview last night, you know, he said the biggest drawback, the hardest thing in his presidency, has been dealing with the mainstream media. And his supporters feel that way too. And you can see some of this footage soon on our media misses show through the Daily Signal. Morgan helps

produce and put that together behind the scenes. So hopefully we'll have that for all of you to see soon. So cool. I can't wait to watch it myself. And we'll leave it there for today. Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Signal podcast. Please be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or SoundCloud, and please leave us a review or rating on iTunes to give us any feedback.

We'll see you again tomorrow. You've been listening to the Daily Signal podcast, executive produced by Kate Trinko and Daniel Davis. designed by Michael Gooden, Lauren Evans, and Thalia Rampersad. For more information, visitdailysignal.com.