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The next president elevates a prominent Michigan supporter to a high-profile domestic Cabinet post.

By nominating Betsy DeVos as education secretary on Wednesday, Donald Trump is "putting an ardent supporter of school choice in charge of the nation’s education policy," says The Detroit News, describing her as a "West Michigan GOP mega-donor and philanthropist."

DeVos, a lifelong Michiganian with homes in Grand Rapids and Alma, is a crusader for public education vouchers to let parents pick from among public, charter, private or online schools without cost. 

► Related article: In Her Words: What Trump Nominee Betsy DeVos Says About Education Policy

"Teachers' unions and other proponents of public schools immediately decried DeVos’s nomination as a catastrophic attack on public education," The Washington Post reports.


Betsy DeVos: "The status quo in education is not acceptable.” (Photos from family foundation)

On another hot-button issue, DeVos tweets Wednesday afternoon:

Many of you are asking about Common Core. To clarify, I am not a supporter—period. 

Common Core State Standards are math and reading guidelines adopted by most state education departments. 

The president-elect's Cabinet nominees require confirmation by the Senate, where Republicans will continue to have a majority of seats in January..

DeVos is a billionaire former Republican National Committee member (1992-97) and Michigan Republican Party chair (1996-2000).

DeVos met last Saturday in New Jersey with Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence. The News quotes her as saying Wednesday:

"The status quo in education is not acceptable. Together, we can work to make transformational change that ensures every student in America has the opportunity to fulfill his or her highest potential.”

She chairs the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation, a grant-giving nonprofit set up with her husband in 1989. The mission page says it "focuses on education, community, the arts, justice and leadership." 

The next education secretary grew up in Holland, Mich., and graduated from Calvin College in Grand Rapids with a degree in business administration and political science.

She and her husband in 1989 started the Windquest Group, which invests in technology, manufacturing and clean energy.

Trump's selection "shows a willingness to look outside his circle of loyalists," writes Emma Brown in The Washington Post:

DeVos donated money to Republican primary contenders Carly Fiorina and Jeb Bush before throwing her support behind Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.. She was never an enthusiastic Trump supporter, telling the Washington Examiner in March that she considered him an “interloper” who “does not represent the Republican Party. 


Betsy and Dick DeVos have four children and five grandchildren.

Here's more from The Detroit News' report by Chad Livengood, Jonathan Oosting and Michael Gerstein:

DeVos, 58, is seen as a national leader in the school choice movement, which she has called an attempt to “empower” parents to find good schools for their children, whether they be traditional public schools in other neighborhoods, charter schools, virtual schools or private institutions.

“Betsy DeVos is a brilliant and passionate education advocate,” Trump said Wednesday in a statement. “Under her leadership, we will reform the U.S. education system and break the bureaucracy that is holding our children back so that we can deliver world-class education and school choice to all families.”

Dick DeVos, 61, is the son of Amway co-founder Richard DeVos and was chief executive of  that company from 1993-2002. In 2006, he ran for governor against Democratic incumbent Jennifer Granholm.

In 2012, Forbes magazine pegged his net at around $5.1 billion.

Ron Fournier, a veteran politics reporter and columnist who's now associate publisher at Crain's Detroit Business, reacts on Twitter to the appointment: 

Biographical information about the DeVos couple comes from Wikipedia.