Why DeVos's Parkland Visit Failed

Upon hearing that U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos would visit the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High campus after the school shooting that killed 17 people, the student Emma González was wary: “Good thing I was already planning on sleeping in tomorrow,” she tweeted. Other students at Stoneman Douglas reacted in much the same way. “Literally no one asked for this,” Sarah Chadwick, another student, tweeted, referring to DeVos’s visit. It seems this was a popular sentiment—both tweets have received tens of thousands of likes.

DeVos’s visit itself didn’t do much to turn things around. According to a Department of Education , she “met with students, teachers, and administrators” and designed the trip based on recommendations from the school principal over how to minimize disruption for the students’ first full day back at school. But after the event, both students and teachers the education secretary for not