President-elect Donald Trump is moving swiftly to staff his senior team and Cabinet positions, with news already broken about high-profile choices for secretary of state, EPA director, and ambassador to the United Nations.
The brisk pace is fueling even more curiosity, speculation, and betting about who Trump may choose to be his education secretary and lead an agency that he has pledged to get rid of.
Trump’s secretary will likely support slimming down if not dismantling the Education Department; expanding school choice; slashing K-12 spending; and attacking school districts’ diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
Plenty of GOP lawmakers, state education chiefs, and advocates could get on board with that agenda. But a future secretary’s ability to communicate and champion Trump’s education policies may help determine their success.
Education Week reported on a robust list of possibilities before Trump’s decisive win, and now we’re back with an updated look at potential contenders for the job of U.S. Secretary of Education.
Who may be on the short list for Education Secretary?
We’ll start with Cade Brumley, the state superintendent in Louisiana who’s been on the list of possibilities since well before the election and remains in play, according to GOP sources.
During his four-year tenure in Louisiana, he’s pushed for what he describes as a “back to basics” approach to education, focusing on math, reading, and science rather than cultural issues, and for expanding school choice.
He’s also worked to stop identifying schools for intervention based on student suspensions and to make it easier for teachers to remove disruptive students from their classrooms.
And he might have a relatively easy time getting through a Senate confirmation process. The incoming chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee is Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Brumley’s home state of Louisiana.
Cassidy, who will need to shepherd any education secretary through the confirmation process, was one of only seven GOP senators to vote to impeach Trump after the events of Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump encouraged a violent mob to disrupt the congressional certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory.
A pragmatic lawmaker who has supported programs to improve educational outcomes for children with dyslexia, Cassidy may not be apt to embrace a MAGA firebrand. Two moderate GOP senators—Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska—might also be disinclined to support picks who are strongly associated with the culture wars in schools.
Collins and Murkowski voted against Trump’s first education secretary, Betsy DeVos, prompting then-vice-president Mike Pence to cast a history-making tie-breaking vote in her favor.
Those political hurdles might present a roadblock for two other hopefuls—Tiffany Justice, the co-founder of Moms for Liberty and Ryan Walters, the state superintendent in Oklahoma who seems to be making the most overt pitch for the gig.
Justice, who interviewed Trump on stage at her group’s annual convention in August, told Education Week recently she’d be “honored to serve” as his education secretary—or in another role in a potential second Trump term. But she also said Brumley, the Louisiana schools chief, would be a good choice.
Walters, a former social studies teacher and one-time finalist for state teacher of the year, was elected to the position of superintendent of public instruction in 2022. Before that, he served as the Sooner State’s secretary of education in Gov. Kevin Stitt’s Cabinet.
Walters, who endorsed Trump, has developed a national reputation as one of the right’s most vigorous critics of federal “overreach” in schools and flaws in how they teach.
“I’m happy to help President Trump in any way that I can,” Walters told Education Week in response to a question about his interest in the secretary gig.
Walters announced Nov. 11 that he is setting up an advisory committee in Oklahoma to “oversee federal public education policy changes that are anticipated under the incoming Trump Administration.” And he sent a memo to Oklahoma parents and district superintendents highlighting his vigorous support for Trump’s education policy priorities.
Of course, Trump has already raised the spectre of making recess appointments, insisting that the yet-to-be named Republican majority leader of the Senate agree to such a move. That would allow him to make appointments and bypass Senate confirmation.
Is Betsy DeVos in the running for education secretary? Whom would she recommend?
DeVos resigned early from Trump’s cabinet on Jan. 7, 2021, citing the president’s role in inciting a mob to storm the U.S. Capitol and disrupt its certification of Biden’s victory.
But in an exclusive interview with Education Week after Trump’s victory, she said would be “very open” to talking with the president-elect about serving in his second administration.
“I have been really clear about what I think needs to be the agenda, which is to get the federal tax credit passed and to de-power the Department of Education. If President-elect Trump wanted to talk to me, I would be very open to talking,” DeVos said in the EdWeek interview. “But I think there’s also a lot of folks [who could do the job well].
“I think about an ideal secretary of education, what their experience might be. A governor who’s led in their state on education reform issues,” DeVos continued. “That would be a very good profile. Someone who could do the things that need to be done, could come in and hit the ground running. The federal Department of Education is a labyrinth, a maze, and I think someone who has accomplished real reforms on a state level would be really fit and suitable for that position.”
GOP education sources have shared some names of governors and former governors they could see as a good fit for the job, including Bobby Jindal, the former Louisiana governor who also served on the education committee when he was in Congress; Doug Ducey, the former governor of Arizona and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump’s former communications director and current Arkansas governor. (It’s unclear if any of them have jumped from the wishlist to the transition team’s shortlist, however.)
Glenn Youngkin, the Virginia governor whose election in 2021 was largely attributed to galvanizing voters around education issues, especially the role of parents’ rights following pandemic school closures, has signaled that he’s not interested right now. In a Nov. 7 interview with WDBJ, Youngkin said he’s committed to finishing his term as governor, which concludes in 2026.
Would Trump appoint a state superintendent to be his education secretary?
Two other potential state superintendents could be in the mix: South Carolina’s Ellen Weaver, an elected Republican, and Florida’s Manny Díaz Jr.
Both support expanding school choice and have opposed what they perceive as “woke ideology” in schools, including rejecting the College Board’s AP African American studies course.
One potential pitfall for Díaz: He was appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, who ran against Trump for the GOP nomination.
Another Floridian’s name has also surfaced as a possible Trump education secretary: U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, a rumored Trump vice-presidential pick. (The nod ultimately went to Ohio Sen. JD Vance.)
Donalds’ wife, Erika Donalds, is a former school board member and charter school founder.
Will Trump consider an education secretary from higher education?
Some GOP education insiders are urging Trump to eschew the K-12 world altogether and choose someone with a postsecondary background as his next education secretary, former Republican congressional aides said.
After all, there are plenty of big higher education issues for the next secretary to sink their policy teeth into, including righting the troubled rollout of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, dealing with student lending programs, and moving forward with an aggressive campaign to revamp accreditation in higher education, a long-time GOP priority.
And Trump made retooling career-technical education—a rare bipartisan area these days—a rhetorical focus, if not a policy priority, in his first term.
Meanwhile, the big K-12 GOP agenda items—abolishing the Education Department and shifting federal funding to private schools in a big way—would all run straight into the Senate’s legislative filibuster, which takes 60 votes to overcome.
Finally, we can rule out Vivek Ramaswamy, whom Trump namechecked at a campaign rally in October as someone who could oversee the dismantling of the Education Department. On Nov. 12, Trump announced that Ramaswamy and Elon Musk would lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency” in his new administration.
During his brief presidential run, Ramaswamy pledged to abolish the education department and enhance civics education.
