I know it’s too late for Halloween, but here’s something scary to think about: As Jack Schneider argued this week at the History of Education Society annual meeting, the reason Betsy DeVos flubs so many basic questions in interviews is not because she is dim. It is not because she is a tony socialite out of her depth, or as Stephen Colbert described her, “one of the garden-party guests from Get Out.” No, the reason Queen Betsy makes so many prominent mistakes is far more frightening for people who care about public education.

Given recent revelations from Trump’s White House, it’s easy to forget what used to seem shocking, but back in 2018 Queen Betsy astounded America with her vast ignorance about educational questions. A lot of commentators concluded that she embodied ineptitude.

Exhibit A was her interview with Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes:

DEVOS: Well, in places where there have been — where there is — a lot of choice that’s been introduced — Florida, for example, the — studies show that when there’s a large number of students that opt to go to a different school or different schools, the traditional public schools actually — the results get better, as well.

STAHL: Now, has that happened in Michigan? We’re in Michigan. This is your home state.

DeVOS: Michi — Yes, well, there’s lots of great options and choices for students here.

STAHL: Have the public schools in Michigan gotten better?

DEVOS: I don’t know. Overall, I — I can’t say overall that they have all gotten better.

STAHL: The whole state is not doing well.

DEVOS: Well, there are certainly lots of pockets where this — the students are doing well and —

As Chris Cillizza commented for the Washington Post at the time,

If I was a boxing referee, I would have stopped this exchange about halfway through. If you are the secretary of education, you have to know you are going to be asked about the effects of school choice — particularly in your home state. So, if you’re going to argue that school choice has made public schools better, you had had better find a whole hell of a lot better spin that “I don’t know.”

As Stephen Colbert put it,

DeVos’s theory is that if you take money away from public schools and give it to charter schools, that will somehow help the public schools. It’s a system called . . . Stupid.

It’s tempting to dismiss Queen Betsy as merely ignorant, but Professor Schneider raised a more frightening prospect in his paper. Namely, Secretary DeVos is unaware of basic ideas about public education BECAUSE SHE DOES NOT CONSIDER THEM RELEVANT TO EDUCATION POLICY.

The core of Secretary DeVos’s thinking about public education, Prof. Schneider argues, is that it should and can be dismantled. For more, you can now preorder Schneider’s latest book, A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door.

And that’s the really scary aspect of Sec’y DeVos’s public ignorance about public education. As the leading federal official responsible of education policy, Queen Betsy does not think she needs to know the features of a doomed system. Why study the layout of deck chairs on the Titanic?