As a second choice, DeVos favors public schools operated by private organizations, or charter schools. The Lansing, Michigan-based Great Lakes Education Project -- a combination of a political-action committee, lobbying group and nonprofit educational fund - - pushed for a charter-school law that now gives the private organizations more freedom and less oversight than in most states.

Aviation Academy

In Grand Rapids, near the city’s airport, her family founded its own charter school. Her husband, who loves airplanes, started West Michigan Aviation Academy, which offers student training on its pair of Cessna planes.

Full-size airplanes hang from the ceiling of the main school commons area, and a partially disassembled helicopter forms the centerpiece of a study area. Students not only learn to fly, they also build remote-control aircraft as well as robots. About a third of the students are in the pilot program.

As is typical at the state’s charter schools, the nonprofit academy has a contract with a company called Michigan Educational Personnel Services, which provides administrative support. The state’s charter law, as crafted by DeVos allies, has been among the most hospitable for for-profit companies. But Betsy DeVos’s heart is clearly in vouchers.

“Charter schools take a while to start up and get operating,’’ she said in a 2013 interview. “Meanwhile, there are very good nonpublic schools, hanging on by a shoestring, that can begin taking students today.’’

Dissolving Schools

Michigan’s Mackinac Center, a free-market think tank that has received money from the DeVos family, estimates there are about 21,000 spots in private Michigan schools that could be filled by voucher students.

DeVos’s Michigan political-action committee last year advocated unsuccessfully for dissolving Detroit’s financially struggling school district rather than spending $617 million to rescue it. Such stances have earned her opposition from the American Federation of Teachers.

“She is a poster child for wanting to decimate public education,’’ said President Randi Weingarten.