Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Tuesday suggested CBS edited her comments during her poorly received "60 Minutes" interview that aired Sunday, The Hill reports.
"So, now that I have the opportunity to speak unedited, I'm not afraid to call out folks who defend stagnation for what it really is: failure," she said during a speech at the National Parent Teachers association conference in Virginia.
DeVos seemed unprepared to answer questions about what she has done to improve national education, and stumbled when CBS's Lesley Stahl pressed her on taking funding away from public schools.
The Education Department defended DeVos, but reports suggest White House officials were alarmed by her struggle to answer basic questions about the nation's schools, including why she said she did not know whether public schools in Michigan had gotten better.
DeVos has spent millions of dollars on school efforts in Michigan, and has consistently pushed for school choice.
Stahl challenged her argument there were "lots of pockets" where students were doing well, telling DeVos: "Your argument that if you take funds away that the schools will get better is not working in Michigan, where you had a huge impact and influence over the direction of the school system here."
DeVos tweeted Monday that CBS failed to include two bits of information her department had provided, and said the same Tuesday.
"In Detroit, for example, students who attend charter schools perform twice as well as their traditional public school counterparts on state achievement tests," she said.
"But that's still not good enough. Michigan hasn't embraced further reforms and hasn't yet offered parents robust choice. As a result, students have suffered."
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