Education Week - April 29, 2020 - 8

Pandemic a High-Stakes Test for DeVos' Leadership
Crisis demands
strong symbolic,
policy responses
By Andrew Ujifusa
In her first three years in office, U.S.
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos
drew attention-and fierce criticism-like none of her predecessors.
Now, as the country wrestles with the
coronavirus pandemic, DeVos faces
circumstances no education secretary
has ever confronted.
So far, her public actions and messages during the unprecedented
shutdown of schools nationwide have
demonstrated a mixture of leniency

and pressure. But other complex tests
await her. The fluctuating pressures-
to be lenient or steadfast, to provide
resources and clarity but not become
overbearing or callous-shift from
issue to issue and depend on whether
she's addressing policymakers, advocates, educators, the general public, or
all of them at once.
Normally averse to coercing or
cajoling states and schools on most
issues, DeVos' political preferences
now happen to align in many ways
with her limited statutory power,
which does not cover decisions about
whether to close or reopen schools or
how to maintain some kind of instruction. Guidance on closures was written by the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention, not her agency.
Where her department has acted

as a minesweeper, clearing accountability and funding mandates out of
schools' path, DeVos has mostly been
executing what's in the Coronavirus
Aid, Relief, and Economic Stimulus
(CARES) Act that lawmakers passed
last month. Even when DeVos exercised her own authority in a high-profile way to let schools scrap federally
mandated annual exams due to the
pandemic, it's hard to envision previous secretaries not doing the same.
Still, DeVos has staked out independent and forceful positions, perhaps best captured by her rallying cry
earlier this month: "We can do hard
things." She urged schools to strive to
teach new material to students, not
just review old lessons. She encouraged officials to think creatively. And
she chided schools that were slow or

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GUESTS
* BARBARA HAEFFNER, Director for
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* ANGIE STAFFORD, Secondary
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Public Schools, Dyer County, Tenn.
MODERATOR
* JENNY EISENMAN, Director
of Education, Reading Plus

resistant to shift to online learning,
stressing that they were not fulfilling
their obligations to all students.
"I commend her strong stand that
learning has to go on, and that this is
not a lost year or a lost cause," said
Margaret Spellings, President George
W. Bush's second education secretary.
But Spellings also said DeVos and
her team must do more to provide
state and local education officials
"as much clarity as possible" through
guidance and clear direction. Spellings and others believe that on a variety of issues, DeVos can and should
play a powerful role by convening experts, sharing their views, and making
it clear that she wants to be a versatile,
nonpartisan resource for the field.
The Education Department did
not make DeVos available for an interview. In a statement, department
spokeswoman Angela Morabito rebutted the idea that DeVos has not
done enough to support educators,
pointing to the resources she's released in the past several weeks and
the flexibility provided to schools.
Morabito said DeVos "spends most
of her day on the phone with local
education leaders, from governors to
state chiefs to superintendents, and
all relay they are getting what they
need from the Department." And, she
said, the department has plans to host
virtual events to help educators share
best practices.
Elsewhere, DeVos must navigate
competing demands when her clout
in Washington, doubted by many observers long before the coronavirus, is
unclear in the current climate. DeVos
is not a member of the Trump administration's coronavirus task force or
its Council to Reopen America, a fact
that could make her job still more difficult; Spellings called DeVos' absence
from those groups "surprising."
And DeVos' looming decision about
whether to tell Congress schools
should get new flexibility from special
education law-an authority granted
her under the CARES Act-will be especially fraught.
"In normal days, I'm probably more
on her side of the ledger: Let people
figure it out, hold them accountable, don't try to micromanage every
input," Spellings said. "But in times
like this ... they want cover."
Morabito, the Education Department spokeswoman, said, "Many
schools across the country are up and
running without issues. Secretary
DeVos has been highlighting and celebrating these successes regularly so
others can learn from them."
As for districts that have struggled
to implement remote learning plans,
Morabito said the true problem has
been "failures of local leadership."
Morabito did not single out specific
districts for this criticism.

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There's been a difference between
the flexibility DeVos (and Congress)
have provided schools, and the education secretary's exhortations about
what people should expect of schools

during the pandemic.
By early March the department had
formed a task force led by Deputy
Secretary of Education Mick Zais to
monitor the situation and help the department work across cabinet agencies in response to the virus. One of its
first messages was a March 5 letter to
educators stressing that they should
pay "careful attention" to bullying and
harassment against students of Asian
descent, due to the origin of the coronavirus in China.
The first sweeping move DeVos
made to address core issues for
schools facing the pandemic was on
March 12, when she issued several
documents providing schools with information about their responsibilities
for testing, student privacy, and assuring continued services for students
with disabilities.
Amid confusion in schools across
the country, she returned to the last
issue March 21, when her department issued a fact sheet stressing
that schools should not use situations
where they couldn't provide remote

People want to see
that their federal
officials get what
they're experiencing
and understand it."
MARGARET SPELLINGS
Former U.S. Secretary of Education

services immediately to all students
as "an excuse not to educate kids."
"We need schools to educate all students out of principle, rather than educate no students out of fear," DeVos
said in a statement accompanying the
fact sheet, emphasizing her disappointment in some schools.

Put to the Test
Aside from compliance issues,
DeVos urged schools to strive to educate students beyond merely reviewing material, even though some states
have encouraged teachers to review
material and only teach new coursework after careful consideration.
"We have an expectation that learning will continue for all students,"
DeVos said in a call with reporters in
early April.
DeVos used her one appearance
on March 27 at regular White House
coronavirus press conferences to
pitch "microgrants" to provide students more educational options.
However, her department has not
publicly provided more details about
the idea.
The March 5 letter about Asianbased discrimination was "pleasantly
surprising," said Liz King, the director of education policy at the Leader-

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Education Week - April 29, 2020

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