With one week to go until Donald Trump’s inauguration for a second term, many are already looking ahead to what the president-elect’s proposed Cabinet picks could mean for K-12 education, and educators themselves are no exception. With the announcement of Linda McMahon as the presumptive nominee for education secretary, educator Robert Barnett responded with a message for the former World Wrestling Entertainment executive: “Education is not entertainment.”
“When I trained to become a teacher,” he reminisced in a recent opinion essay, “I was told quite clearly that my job was to put on a show. I should stand at the board every day and perform my lessons; the more entertaining I was, the more my students would engage and learn.”
But there are three big problems with that expectation of teacher-as-performer, Barnett argues, which it’s important for the next U.S. secretary of education to realize. Here’s what he wants McMahon to know before taking on the new challenge of running the U.S. Department of Education.
Betsy DeVos, who served as the education secretary during Trump’s first term, has her own advice for the next person to step into the role—advice she says she’s already offered McMahon directly. Read the full interview between the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (and Education Week Opinion blogger) Rick Hess and the former secretary to learn more.
Joshua P. Starr took a different tack to Trump’s education secretary announcement, discussing what educators might expect with McMahon at the helm of the department. In “How My Experience With Linda McMahon Can Help You Navigate the Trump Ed. Agenda,” Starr recalls when the two crossed paths professionally—he was the superintendent in Stamford, Conn., and she was the CEO of WWE headquartered there.
“My interactions with McMahon were admittedly limited, and I can’t speak to her current policy positions,” he wrote of his dealings with the then local business leader. “Yet, I wonder if they point to a direction forward as school system leaders confront the inevitable polemics of the second Trump presidency. It seems to me that at the local level, now is the time more than ever to focus on shared interests.”
What does that look like? Try starting with interest-based decisionmaking, Starr advises.
In addition to advice for navigating the politics of a second Trump administration, opinion writers also reflected on what the recent election results mean for our country’s civil discourse more broadly.
Even before the votes were counted, civics educators Nicole Mirra and Antero Garcia were confident in one result: “During every election cycle, like clockwork, a large chunk of the blame for the sorry state of democratic life is directed at schools, specifically the lack of time dedicated to civics instruction,” they wrote on Election Day.
In their opinion essay “Schools Are Often Blamed for Our Foundering Democracy. It’s Not That Simple,” they instead lay out three more productive steps we can take to shore up our civic lives in the next four years and beyond, starting with breaking civics education out of its silo.
In the days immediately following the election results, teacher Larry Ferlazzo sat down to think through what the upcoming administration would mean for teachers and administrators at the school level. Writing for his Classroom Q&A Opinion blog, Ferlazzo proposed that “With Trump in Office, Schools Should Ask Themselves These Questions.”
Katy Anthes, a former education commissioner of Colorado and a national education leader on depolarization, offered a call to action: “We must undo how much we think we hate each other and how much we think the ‘other side’ is evil,” she urged. “Our students inevitably absorb this mentality, and they are acting it out now, too.”
In “A Reminder to America: We Still Agree on More Than We Don’t,” Anthes lays out a road map for bridging those political differences.
Rick Hess interpreted the election results as a reality check for progressives, characterizing the president-elect as “a vehicle for a cross-section of Americans to push back against the kinds of out-of-touch dogmas that I believe have fueled so many culture clashes over the past half-decade, especially around schools.”
In “Trump’s Win Is a Wake-Up Call for Educators. Here’s Why,” Hess submits four opportunities for educators to jettison the “toxic” education philosophies driving those cultural tensions.
One thing Hess doesn’t think you need to worry in the next four years? The abolition of the Education Department. In “No, the U.S. Ed. Dept. Won’t Be Abolished. But Here’s What’s Likely to Happen Instead,” Hess argues exactly that: Eliminating the department is a political long shot and, even if it were to happen, it might not matter as much as you think.
Jonas Zuckerman, a classroom teacher turned education consultant, focused his attention on what might be fueling the anti-Education-Department efforts.
If the department were to close, what problem would it solve? Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota introduced a bill that offers some clues, Zuckerman argued. Drawing on his experience as a former state director of Title I to drill down into the funding equation of the bill, Zuckerman argued there’s one telling break between the proposal and current law.
Whatever happens to the Education Department, there’s no question the political transition is looming large in educators’ minds when planning for the year ahead. Just look at Larry Ferlazzo’s 9 Education Predictions for 2025 or Peter DeWitt and Michael Nelson’s “11 Critical Issues Facing Education at Home and Abroad in 2025” for some less than optimistic forecasting.
