Frederick Hess offers ideas at National Review Online about the best way for President-elect Donald Trump to proceed with his selection of the next U.S. education secretary.
… [I]t was from their perch in the once-sleepy Department of Education that Obama-administration officials handed down some of their most troubling decisions. It was here that Obama’s minions, wildly overreaching, did their best to shove the Common Core down the nation’s throat, told schools that they could no longer allow students to use locker rooms based on biology, pressed colleges to adopt lawless kangaroo courts in response to a nonexistent campus “rape epidemic,” fought to let federal bureaucrats dictate local school spending policies, and championed race-based quotas for school discipline.
The next administration will have the opportunity to either set things right or make permanent Obama’s unfortunate legacy. It matters immensely who leads Trump’s Department of Education. It’s not enough that the person support school choice or be a “reformer.” At least as important is that he or she stands ready to roll back Obama-era overreach, restore educational federalism, roll back regulatory creep, and fight the politically correct fever dreams of education’s liberal elite. Unfortunately, among the names floated for Secretary of Education, several have seemed better-suited to a third Obama term than to the task at hand.
Let’s hope that Trump gets this right. He has a talented team working on the education transition, and that can only help. But Trump is no conservative, so it’s foolish to rely on him choosing as if he were one. If Trump makes the wrong call, the stakes are too high for Republican senators to turn a blind eye. GOP senators need to ask the right questions and stand ready to reject a nominee who fails to fit the bill.
