Although Trump’s choose for the highest training job, Linda McMahon, has restricted expertise within the subject, she’ll be joined in management by a seasoned educator with a bipartisan monitor report—creating what may very well be an efficient crew for advancing the Trump administration’s priorities, training coverage watchers say.
The appointment of former Tennessee state training commissioner Penny Schwinn as deputy secretary on the U.S. Division of Schooling marks a contrasts with Trump’s collection of McMahon for the company’s prime job.
McMahon’s background in enterprise—as co-founder and former World Wrestling Leisure CEO earlier than serving as administrator of the U.S. Small Enterprise Administration in Trump’s first administration—and Schwinn’s sturdy training expertise may pair properly collectively, stated Cate Sommervold, a professor at Doane College and creator of a 2024 e-book on the nation’s 12 secretaries of training.
“They’re a great steadiness of enterprise acumen and expertise in training—they complement one another,” Sommervold stated in an e mail. “I consider that the complementary mixture of the secretary and deputy secretary will enable for an efficient crew that can be capable of make the numerous coverage strikes that the president has proposed.”
Schwinn’s appointment was additionally greeted with optimism by three former secretaries of training who served presidents from each events, and different coverage watchers expressed hope that her choice foretells a spotlight within the federal company on bolstering lecturers following historic achievement declines.
The response has been extra combined in right-wing circles. When Schwinn left her job in Tennessee in 2023, she criticized tradition conflict battles over gender and race instruction as “extraneous politics” in an interview on the time with The 74.
However the Trump administration is already wading into fiery coverage choices by rolling again protections for transgender college students and overturning earlier coverage that prohibited immigration officers from making arrests on college property.
Below considered one of Trump’s directives, the Schooling Division suspended employees who had been concerned with range, fairness, and inclusion work. Its workplace for civil rights additionally dismissed claims associated to district e-book removals and eradicated a coordinator place the Biden administration created to “handle the rising menace that e-book bans pose for the civil rights of scholars.”
Supporters of Schwinn’s appointment hope it portends a give attention to studying outcomes.
“She has confirmed to be succesful and sensible, solutions-oriented, and keen to achieve throughout the aisle to get issues achieved,” stated Roberto Rodriguez, who labored on the Schooling Division throughout the Obama and Biden administrations. “I feel she’ll be a great associate.”
Schwinn attracts reward for her work on literacy in Tennessee
The choose of McMahon as secretary of training drew a swift denunciation from the Nationwide Schooling Affiliation, the nation’s largest lecturers’ union.
Schwinn’s appointment, in contrast, drew no rapid response from both of the nation’s two largest lecturers’ unions. Three former training secretaries, in the meantime, thought she was a promising choose.
Arne Duncan, who served beneath Democratic President Barack Obama, described her throughout a Jan. 21 Brookings Establishment panel as “a severe individual.”
“She’s good, she cares about children,” he stated.
Schwinn served as Tennessee’s faculties chief beneath Republican Gov. Invoice Lee from 2019 to 2023. She began her Okay-12 profession as a Train For America instructor in Baltimore, earlier than later shifting into training management positions in a number of states. She had most not too long ago labored on the College of Florida and earlier in her profession based a Sacramento constitution college. Schwinn is a proponent of faculty alternative—a precedence for the Trump administration—however has additionally mentioned a necessity for fiscal and educational accountability measures as a part of insurance policies increasing alternative.
Throughout her tenure as Tennessee faculties chief, she oversaw the event of the primary federally registered instructor apprenticeship program, oversaw implementation of a 2021 state regulation requiring that faculties shift to evidence-based early literacy instruction, and led a overview of the state’s funding method that led to its first revision in a long time.
“When she was in Tennessee, she was a voice for urgency round serving to college students learn higher, do math higher, graduate higher ready for school and careers,” John King Jr., who served as training secretary beneath Obama, stated on the identical Brookings panel. “We want that form of management on this second; we’re nonetheless approach behind the place we had been earlier than COVID.”
Margaret Spellings, who served beneath Republican President George W. Bush, echoed the sentiment.
“They’ve been in authorities,” she stated of Schwinn and McMahon. “They know learn how to work with a legislative physique. There’s some actual encouraging indicators.”
Schwinn is a much less polarizing choose than the No. 2 in Trump’s first Schooling Division
Throughout Trump’s first administration, the president’s choose for the No. 2 slot on the Schooling Division, Mick Zais, the previous South Carolina state chief, was almost as polarizing as Trump’s collection of Betsy DeVos for training secretary.
Schwinn cuts a unique mould, and he or she may assist the Trump administration overcome a few of the animosity created by the president’s govt orders focusing on profession staffers, stated Carlas McCauley, who labored on the division as a profession staffer from 2007 to 2014.
“Penny Schwinn is unbelievable,” stated McCauley, an affiliate professor of training management and coverage research at Howard College. “I’ve watched her, from Delaware to Texas to Tennessee, construct the form of rapport internally, no matter social gathering line, to battle for and educate probably the most weak scholar populations within the nation.”
Her background as a state chief—particularly one with a “confirmed monitor report”—shall be very important in a task that’s heavy on state-federal relations, stated Carey M. Wright, the state superintendent of faculties for Maryland, who calls Schwinn a great pal and whose tenure as Mississippi’s state faculties chief overlapped with Schwinn’s in Tennessee.
“It’s simple to take a seat up in an workplace and say, ‘Oh, let’s make the states do X.’ In the event you don’t have any expertise at doing X, you haven’t any thought the quantity of labor that goes into implementation and execution at a state stage to get that completed,” Wright stated.
Schwinn understands how fellow state chiefs will reply to new insurance policies and initiatives from the division, and realizing how issues are achieved on the state stage will finally assist the federal company, Wright stated.
Schwinn has “an actual depth in background,” significantly on the subject of working giant, advanced bureaucracies, stated Jim Blew, who served within the company throughout Trump’s first time period.
“That places her ready to be very useful to the secretary,” stated Blew, who’s now a co-founder of the Protection of Freedom Institute, a nonprofit centered on conservative coverage options. “She’s going to be an incredible deputy secretary.”
Whereas McMahon’s job may have her interfacing with the White Home, Schwinn’s may have her managing the division. With the 2 seeming “very aligned philosophically,” Blew anticipates they’ll complement one another properly.
Her appointment, nonetheless, has rankled some on the fitting.
When right-wing activist Christopher Rufo, a high-profile critic of range, fairness, and inclusion insurance policies, got here out in assist of Schwinn’s appointment final week, his publish about it on the social media platform X drew a number of important responses from conservatives.
Throughout her tenure in Tennessee, one transfer that drew criticism from Republicans was a coverage offering COVID aid funds to districts to assist at-home well-being checks of scholars throughout the pandemic.
Schwinn’s choose signifies making use of the division, quite than abolishing it
Schwinn’s and McMahon’s affirmation hearings have but to be scheduled, however they’re certain to characteristic questions for each about their ideas on eliminating the U.S. Division of Schooling—a key Trump training precedence.
The administration has two choices—diminish the company’s position and transfer its important features to different departments, or use it for numerous political ends, whether or not that’s as a “machine of tradition conflict” or increasing non-public college alternative, stated Mark Hlavacik, an affiliate professor of communication research on the College of North Texas.
“I see the choice so as to add Schwinn in that [latter] path,” Hlavacik stated. “There are plans to utilize the Division of Schooling.”
It’s a danger for the division to get “distracted” with issues like rolling again range, fairness, and inclusion, quite than specializing in studying, stated Rodriguez. He hopes the addition of Schwinn is an effective signal that studying will take priority.
“That work—the actual work round instructing and studying, scholar well-being and success, and financial preparedness, financial competitiveness—that may’t wait. That could be very pressing work,” Rodriguez stated.
Wright stated Schwinn is sweet at conserving “the primary factor, the primary factor.”
“We’re all out right here attempting to guarantee that college students lives are modified for the constructive, and that they turn out to be good readers, and have numeracy beneath their belts—all of the issues that you really want younger adults rising into,” she stated.
Blew predicts a second Trump time period that appears lots completely different from the primary, with the president taking workplace centered on points squarely within the Schooling Division’s portfolio—together with Title IX, scholar mortgage debt, and DEI.
“I feel the White Home shall be way more engaged in shaping the Schooling Division’s agenda and work this time,” he stated.
