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The Michigan billionaire's confirmation hearing was heavy on partisanship and light on substance.

Carolyn Kaster / AP

This story was updated on September 8, 2017.

Donald Trump advocated on the campaign trail for a $20 billion federal school-voucher program. But during her confirmation hearing on Tuesday evening, Betsy DeVos, the president-elect's choice to lead the U.S. Education Department, said school choice should be a state decision. She framed school choice as a right for students and families. And she said during the hearing that she was committed to strengthening public education for all students.

While the Michigan billionaire has backed charter schools and vouchers, which let families use public money to pay for private schools, DeVos would not, she said, try to force states to embrace school choice. But a number of organizations, largely Democratic, that had raised questions about DeVos's commitment to expanding charters and vouchers and about her family's financial holdings and religious causes were unlikely to find much more of the hearing reassuring.

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Throughout the three-hour-plus exchange between DeVos and members of the Senate's Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, DeVos-who has never taught public school, never attended public school, and never held elected office-sidestepped questions about everything from how she will ensure that groups she has backed financially in the past will not feel pressure to behave a certain way to whether guns belong in schools. At one point, she seemed to suggest that a federal law governing how students with disabilities are educated could be left to states, prompting Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan to express concern about her grasp of the department's obligations.

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What Betsy DeVos Did (and Didn't) Reveal About Her Education Priorities

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The Michigan billionaire's confirmation hearing was heavy on partisanship and light on substance. This story was updated on September 8, 2017. Donald Trump advocated on the campaign trail for a $20 billion federal school-voucher program. But during her confirmation hearing on Tuesday evening, Betsy DeVos, the president-elect's choice to lead the U.S.

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Betsy is confirmed as Secretary of Education

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Betsy is confirmed as Secretary of Education

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Mike Pence broke the tie to secure her position

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WASHINGTON - Betsy DeVos, a wealthy Republican donor with almost no experience in public education, was confirmed by the Senate as the nation's education secretary on Tuesday, but only with the help of a historic tiebreaking vote from Vice President Mike Pence after weeks of protests and two defections within her own party.

The 51-to-50 vote capped an all-night vigil on the Senate floor, where, one by one, Democrats denounced Ms. DeVos to a mostly empty chamber. But they did not get a third Republican defection that would have stopped Ms. DeVos - a billionaire who has devoted much of her life to promoting charter schools and vouchers - from becoming the steward of the nation's nearly 100,000 public schools.

It was the first time a vice president has been summoned to the Capitol to break a tie on a cabinet nomination.

Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, demanded before the vote that Republicans explain how they could support Ms. DeVos. "If we cannot set aside party loyalty long enough to perform the essential duty of vetting the president's nominees, what are we even doing here?" Mr. Franken asked.

The two Republicans who voted against the nominee, Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, said Ms. DeVos was unqualified because of a lack of familiarity with public schools and with laws meant to protect students.

"I have serious concerns about a nominee to be secretary of education who has been so involved in one side of the equation, so immersed in the push for vouchers, that she may be unaware of what actually is successful within the public schools, and also what is broken and how to fix them," Ms. Murkowski said last week when the two announced their opposition.

Ms. Murkowski also said she had been influenced by thousands of messages she had received urging her to reject the nomination.

For many educators, Ms. DeVos's support for charter schools and vouchers - which allow students to use taxpayer dollars to pay tuition at private, religious and for-profit schools - reflected a deep disconnect from public schools. Neither Ms. DeVos nor any of her children attended a public school.

Most Republicans described Ms. DeVos as committed to what is best for children. In a fiery speech moments before the vote, Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee and a former education secretary himself, criticized his Democratic colleagues for opposing Ms. DeVos, he said, simply because she was nominated by a Republican president.

"She led the most effective public school reform movement over the last few years," he said. Mr. Alexander, the chairman of the committee that approved Ms. DeVos's nomination last week in a party-line split, said she had been "at the forefront" of education overhaul for decades.

By midday Tuesday, as the vote in the Senate deadlocked at 50 to 50, Mr. Pence, a former member of the House, took the gavel and at 12:29 p.m. declared his vote for Ms. DeVos. In a procedural quirk, a confirmation vote on Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama for attorney general was scheduled after that of Ms. DeVos so he could vote "yes" before leaving the Senate, securing Republicans a decisive vote.

Raised in a wealthy family, Ms. DeVos, who married into the Amway fortune, has a web of financial investments, has also raised alarm among critics who worried about the many opportunities for conflicts of interest. She was the first of Mr. Trump's nominees not to complete an ethics review before appearing before a Senate panel. She filed her ethics paperwork on Jan. 19, two days after her confirmation hearing.

Teachers' unions and even some charter organizations had protested Ms. DeVos's nomination across the country. Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the committee that approved Ms. DeVos - and a former educator herself - urged disheartened advocates on Tuesday morning before the vote not to think of their efforts as a waste.

"It's made an impact here and made a difference," she said. "And I think it's woken each of us up in this country to what we value and what we want."

Shortly after Ms. DeVos's confirmation, Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, a union that protested the nomination, said the public would now have to "serve as a check and balance" to her policies and be "fierce fighters on behalf of children."

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Two Republicans senators, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, left, and Susan Collins of Maine, center, voted against Ms. DeVos. Credit Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times

"It's telling that even when Trump had full control of the legislative and executive branches, he could only get DeVos confirmed by an unprecedented tiebreaking vote by his vice president," Ms. Weingarten said. "That's because DeVos shows an antipathy for public schools, a full-throttled embrace of private, for-profit alternatives and a lack of basic understanding of what children need to succeed in school."

David E. Kirkland, an education professor at New York University who has studied Ms. DeVos's impact in Michigan, said he feared she could badly hurt public education and pull resources out of schools in need of federal funding. "Her extensive conflicts of interest and record of diverting money away from vulnerable students and into the pockets of the rich make DeVos completely unfit for the position she was just confirmed to," he said.

Ms. DeVos has focused on expanding parental choice in education and on embracing charter schools and vouchers. Her ideology was a good fit for Mr. Trump's education platform during the campaign, which called for a $20 billion voucher initiative aimed at low-income children.

But freeing such an enormous sum would most likely require the reallocation of federal education money, as well as a realignment of congressional priorities. Vouchers were not part of a sweeping education overhaul passed in 2015, and lawmakers from rural areas, where schools tend to be farther apart, are particularly wary of such initiatives.

The Trump administration could potentially advance a more limited voucher program and seek tax credits for private school tuition or home schooling costs.

Ms. DeVos has also indicated that she would dismantle other pieces of the Obama administration's legacy, potentially including a rule that denies federal student aid money to for-profit colleges whose graduates struggle to get jobs, as well as an aggressive effort to investigate and adjudicate campus sexual assault claims.

Ms. DeVos's critics said they would continue to fight her as she serves. Some vowed to demonstrate at her appearances at forums and schools and to seek candidates friendly to their view to run for local office.

Lily Eskelsen García, the president of the National Education Association, said her union would tap into the vast database of advocates it had built during Ms. DeVos's confirmation process to help keep her in check. "As soon as she does something alarming, it will be known, it will be seen," she said. "She won't be able to hide."

Mr. Trump's choice of Ms. DeVos, known for her big-spending lobbying efforts to expand charter schools in Michigan - an experiment that even charter school supporters now criticize - to lead the Education Department presented senators with a multitude of potential pitfalls. Her background as a prolificfund-raiser who has donated about $200 million over the years to Republican causes and candidates - including some senators, as has been the case for previous presidential nominees - came under scrutiny.

Democrats have also expressed concern about her family's contributions to groups that support so-called conversion therapy for gay people and her past statements that government "sucks" and that public schools are a "dead end." Opponents have also focused on the poor performance of charter schools in Detroit, which she championed.

Senators and education advocates from both sides of the aisle also expressed concern after Ms. DeVos, during her Jan. 17 confirmation hearing, confused core responsibilities of the department.

In one notable exchange that spread across the internet, Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, asked Ms. DeVos whether all schools that receive public money should have to follow the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, the landmark 1975 civil rights legislation. Under that federal law, states and school districts are required to provide special education services to children with disabilities.

Ms. DeVos said the issue was "best left to the states."

In a bizarre moment that made her the butt of late-night TV jokes, Ms. DeVos also suggested that states should decide whether to allow guns in schools, citing in part concerns about protection from grizzly bears in Wyoming.

"I think probably there, I would imagine there is probably a gun in a school to protect from potential grizzlies," she said.

Before the vote Tuesday, Mr. Franken said, "It was the most embarrassing confirmation hearing that I have ever seen."

In a final push that included demonstrations around the country, constituents and advocates swamped Senate offices with calls, so inundating the Capitol switchboard that it disrupted the Senate's voice mail system.

Correction:

An article on Wednesday about the Senate confirmation of Betsy DeVos as secretary of education described incorrectly the role of public pressure in the "no" votes cast by two Republicans. While Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said she had been influenced by thousands of messages she received urging her to reject the nomination, Senator Susan Collins of Maine did not in fact refer to such public comments as influencing her decision to oppose the nomination.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: DeVos Confirmed for Education by Pence's Vote. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Betsy DeVos Confirmed as Education Secretary; Pence Breaks Tie

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WASHINGTON - Betsy DeVos, a wealthy Republican donor with almost no experience in public education, was confirmed by the Senate as the nation's education secretary on Tuesday, but only with the help of a historic tiebreaking vote from Vice President Mike Pence after weeks of protests and two defections within her own party.

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This article describes what Betsy DeVos is planning for education in the United States.

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"In her hearing DeVos really did not demonstrate preparation and knowledge for the responsibility of the nations' schools," said Daria Hall, who is the interim vice president for government affairs and communications at Education Trust, a non-profit education advocacy group.

When asked about gun control on school grounds by Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut, who has been vocal on gun control since the Sandy Hook massacre, DeVos said potentially having guns in a wildlife-plagued Wyoming school could protect against attacks from grizzly bears.

Such examples prove why decisions on these matters should be left up to states and local districts' needs, she said.

Her Views on Education
DeVos has poured millions of dollars through the DeVos Family Foundation into strongly supporting and heavily lobbying for charter schools and vouchers. She believes firmly that charter schools provide excellent options for school choice and has aligned herself with the voucher movement.

This puts her at odds with several large teachers' associations.
Related: Nomination of Betsy DeVos, Trump's Pick for Dept. of Education, in Peril
"She is regarded as an enemy to public education" since she has associated herself so closely to the private school choice program, said Jon Valant, a fellow at the Brown Center for Education Policy at the Brookings Institution.

Supporters say she cares about kids and wants to come up with the best solutions to improve education.

"We all want high academic standards and we all want consistent standards and Betsy Devos will do that," former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer told MSNBC on Friday.
Her Charter School Push Didn't Fare Well in Michigan
DeVos faced fierce criticism from Michigan parents and educators for her role in the charter school boom, who say her passion project resulted in unregulated schools and poor education performance.

The state has 300 charter schools, and more than 80 percent are run by for-profit companies - the highest rate in the nation.

"For-profit schools are money makers and only care about a bottom line," said Arlyssa Heard, a mother of two children and parent advocate with 482 Forward, a grassroots education network in Detroit. "They entice you like any business would entice a customer, except the customers are our kids."

But Heard, whose children went through a number of unsuccessful charter school rounds, said once they sign you up, there is no guarantee the school will fulfill its promise or even stay open through the school year.

Michigan charter schools remain largely unregulated, which means there is zero accountability, said Lamar Lemmons, who sits on the Board of Education for the Detroit Public Schools.

"If you're getting federal dollars to run your charter school, then you should be held to some standard. But that hasn't happened in Detroit," said Ivy Bailey, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers.

A 2016 state bill that included a provision to create a body, called the Detroit Education Commission, that would oversee school accountability did not pass a vote. The measure's failure is attributed to DeVos' hefty lobbying dollars, said Bailey.
Related: Senate Dems Grill Betsy DeVos, Trump's Education Secretary Pick
Charter school students in Michigan actually scored lower on performance tests than students at more traditional schools, according to an investigation by the Detroit Free Press. The investigation found that roughly 150 Michigan charter schools have been around for 10 years or more and 64 percent are in the bottom half of ranked schools.

"Both traditional and charter schools can coexist, but the policy DeVos advocated has been destabilizing to both," said Michigan state representative Sherri Gay-Dagnogo.

Stability through choice and local control is exactly what DeVos is looking to bring back to public education, supporters say.

She "understands the need to bring back education control to state and local boards," and will "empower our parents, teachers, students, and local education officials," said Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nevada, in a statement Thursday.

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Betsy DeVos is riling up education advocates. Here's why.

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"In her hearing DeVos really did not demonstrate preparation and knowledge for the responsibility of the nations' schools," said Daria Hall, who is the interim vice president for government affairs and communications at Education Trust, a non-profit education advocacy group. When asked about gun control on school grounds by Sen.