Right-wing zealot for Education..

Drumpf picks charter school advocate Betsy Devos to be education secretary

BY Associated Press

President-elect Donald Drumpf has selected a charter school advocate and GOP donor from Michigan to be education secretary.

Betsy DeVos becomes the second woman chosen to fill a spot in Drumpf’s Cabinet. Earlier Wednesday, Drumpf named South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations earlier in the day.

Both selections require Senate confirmation.

Drumpf calls DeVos “a brilliant and passionate education advocate.”

DeVos heads the advocacy group American Federation for Children. She’s known for supporting charter schools and vouchers.

Before Drumpf’s announcement, some conservatives were complaining about DeVos’ ties to the political establishment. They also warned that she previously supported Common Core standards that Drumpf railed against during the campaign.

The 58-year-old DeVos is a former Michigan Republican Party chairwoman. Her husband, Dick, is an heir to the Amway fortune and a former company president.

(Across four decades and two generations, the DeVos family has poured more than $200 million into the key institutions of the Christian right and the conservative movement.

Members of the DeVos family rank among the most generous benefactors of the conservative movement and the Christian right, up there with the Bradleys, the Coorses, and the Kochs. Not only has billionaire Amway cofounder Richard DeVos Sr. cut checks to anti-union and anti-tax efforts, but these days he's also a fixture at the Koch brothers' invite-only donor summits. Name an organization—Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, David Koch's Americans for Prosperity, the arch-conservative Heritage Foundation—and odds are a DeVos family member has donated to it.)