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Betsy DeVos, Pick for Secretary of Education, Is the Most Jeered

Demonstrators in Chicago protested President Trump’s cabinet nominees, including Betsy DeVos, his choice for education secretary, on Tuesday.Credit...Scott Olson/Getty Images

By most any measure, the secretary of education is one of the least powerful cabinet positions.

The secretary is 16th in the line of succession to the presidency. Education accounts for a paltry 3 percent of the federal budget, compared with 24 percent for Social Security and 16 percent for defense. And the most recent major federal education law curtailed Washington’s role on testing, standards and accountability, turning much of the firepower in education policy back to states and school districts.

That is what has made the protest movement against Betsy DeVos, President Trump’s nominee to be secretary of education, all the more remarkable.

After an underwhelming confirmation hearing in which Ms. DeVos seemed ignorant of major provisions of federal education law, such as the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, some Senate offices reported receiving more calls opposing Ms. DeVos than any other Trump nominee.

At women’s marches across the country on Jan. 21, protesters carried signs ridiculing her as an out-of-touch billionaire. In Portland, Ore., high school students walked out of class in opposition to Ms. DeVos, and in Anchorage, protesters picketed the office of Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, demanding she vote against the nominee.

This week, Ms. Murkowski and Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, said they would oppose her confirmation, leaving Ms. DeVos one swing senator away from an embarrassing rejection. On Thursday, calls opposing Ms. DeVos so overwhelmed the Senate phone system that by the afternoon, offices were having trouble gaining access to their voice mail messages.

“We are experiencing heavy call volumes in all our offices,” Senator Dean Heller, a Nevada Republican, wrote Thursday on Twitter. “Staff is answering as many as possible.”

The opposition has come from some expected sources: well-funded progressive groups, teachers’ unions and the Democratic Party itself, as well as from grass-roots local parents’ and teachers’ organizations.

But as clamorous as these protests have become, Ms. DeVos is also imperiled by a lack of support from constituencies that a Republican nominee might normally count on.

As a philanthropist and an advocate, she has fought not only for the expansion of the charter school sector — a bipartisan cause — but also for school vouchers, which can allow students to carry taxpayer dollars to private schools, for-profit schools, religious schools and online schools.

Nationwide, most charter schools, including those in the best-known networks, like the KIPP schools, are nonprofit. But the opposite is true in Ms. DeVos’s home state, Michigan, where she has wielded great influence over education policy and beat back efforts to increase oversight of charter schools in Detroit.

Research suggests that traditional public schools and nonprofit charter schools generally outperform for-profit charters and private schools that accept vouchers, and some organizations representing nonprofit charter schools have come out against Ms. DeVos. The Massachusetts Charter Public School Association wrote a letter to Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, last month saying that it was “deeply concerned that efforts to grow school choice without a rigorous accountability system will reduce the quality of charter schools across the country.”

On Wednesday, the philanthropist Eli Broad, a leading funder of nonprofit charter schools, wrote to Senators Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican majority leader, and Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority leader, opposing Ms. DeVos’s confirmation.

“Before Mrs. DeVos’s hearing, I had serious concerns about her support for unregulated charter schools and vouchers as well as the potential conflicts of interest she might bring to the job,” Mr. Broad wrote, possibly alluding to investments she has made in education-related companies. “Her testimony not only reinforced my concerns but also added to them.”

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At her confirmation hearing in January, Ms. DeVos seemed ignorant of major provisions of federal education law.Credit...Al Drago/The New York Times

School choice may not do much to help sparsely populated rural communities, a factor Ms. Collins and Ms. Murkowski cited in their decisions to oppose Ms. DeVos. And the idea of having children attend virtual schools at a computer screen, while a growing practice, leaves many parents and educators cold.

“In rural Alaska, there is one school, and that’s the hub of the community,” said Alyse Galvin, a mother of four and a founder of Great Alaska Schools, which has organized opposition in the state to Ms. DeVos. “That’s where people hang. It’s where the warmth is. In some of these places, it’s where the only running water is.”

“You can’t imagine it if you haven’t been there,” she continued. Ms. DeVos, she said, “hasn’t been there.”

Some in the self-described education reform community have greeted Ms. DeVos’s nomination warmly. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, an advocacy group based in Washington, has endorsed her. “Throughout her career Mrs. DeVos has worked to empower parents and give families strong educational options, so they can do what is best for their child,” the group said in a statement when her nomination was announced. “We look forward to working with Mrs. DeVos.”

She has also attracted support from Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor and presidential candidate, who supports school accountability and has close ties to for-profit educational efforts.

Eva Moskowitz, the founder of the Success Academy charter school network in New York City, and herself a lightning rod for using confrontational political tactics, is one nonprofit charter leader who has vocally supported Ms. DeVos. “I don’t personally want to run virtual schools,” Ms. Moskowitz said. “I like seeing the children, and I think building loving communities is something that is personally important. But should they be an option and can they be done well? I believe yes.”

“What we should be worried about is that so many millions of children are not getting a good education,” she added.

On Friday, the Senate voted to advance Ms. DeVos’s nomination to a final confirmation vote, expected early next week. All 48 senators in the Democratic caucus are expected to oppose her. Even with the two Republicans against her, Ms. DeVos could still be confirmed because Vice President Mike Pence would have the tiebreaking vote. But a third Republican “nay” vote would doom her.

It has not helped Ms. DeVos that she exemplifies much that liberals find objectionable about the Trump administration. She is a Christian conservative, an heir to the Amway fortune and a longtime Republican Party donor. At her confirmation hearing, she would not commit to following a number of President Barack Obama’s education regulations, on matters including campus sexual assault and reining in low-performing for-profit colleges.

Then she ran into the political-entertainment buzz saw, which has made maximum use of some of her (unintentionally) humorous comments at her confirmation hearing. Millions of people have viewed a “Daily Show” segment in which Trevor Noah excoriates her as unqualified, focusing on her statement that guns should be allowed in schools to protect children against “grizzlies.” Celebrities including Michael Moore and Olivia Wilde have spoken out against her.

The late night host Jimmy Kimmel said Ms. DeVos “has no experience in education” and noted that her children had attended private schools. If grizzly bears are a problem in public schools, he joked, maybe Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor, should be secretary of education.

But Ms. DeVos is not the first nominee to lack hands-on experience in running a school system or to hold controversial views. The first secretary, Shirley Hufstedler, appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, was a federal judge. President Ronald Reagan’s second-term pick, William J. Bennett, had strong ties to the religious right and was known for picking fights on hot-button issues like bilingual education and affirmative action. Yet even these nominees were confirmed with bipartisan support and little notice from the public.

This level of opposition “would have been shocking in Bill Bennett’s time,” said Grover J. Whitehurst, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former Education Department official under President George W. Bush. “There was a deference to the president and his ability to have his cabinet appointments, and an institutional respect in the Senate. That has evaporated.”

“Poor Mrs. DeVos is a victim of her poor performance in her hearing,” he said, “but also of broader political theater.”

Emmarie Huetteman contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 9 of the New York edition with the headline: Opposition to Education Pick Is Broad and Vocal. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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