By Della B. Cronin
At last, what has arguably been the most acrimonious general election
cycle in recent memory has ended, and American voters have elected Donald Trump
as President. The divisive election season energized a voting demographic
united by their collective anger at political and establishment institutions
and elites. The rhetoric was bitter and tensions seemed to soar to previously
unimagined heights as ideological camps maintained one candidate was fit only
for prison and the other only capable of insults, bullying, and abuse. Millions
of Americans cast their votes for their top choice; many more cast votes for
the candidate they deemed the lesser of two evils. Election fatigue, real
enough to be palpable, deterred few, as a record-breaking 46 million early
votes were cast and voter turnout on Election Day was up by 4.7 percent in over
half of America’s counties. There were long lines across the nation.
In the days and even hours leading up to
the final results, pundits and predictions all pointed to a Clinton shoo-in,
but in the evening it became clear that Trump supporters, much like the
President-elect himselfbeen underestimated. As election night wore on
(and on), one camp celebrated surprising wins as the other’s fears were
realized. When all was said and done, Trump triumphed with 276 electoral votes
and 47.5 percent of the popular vote, and Clinton trailed with 218 votes but won
47.6 percent of the popular vote.
With the results finalized and the furor
perhaps beginning to recede, a few rumors have circulated as to the composition
of a Trump cabinet. Under possible consideration are former GOP mayor of New
York City Rudy Giuliani for Attorney General; Newt Gingrich, former Republican
House Speaker, for Secretary of State; and acting Chairman of the Republican
National Committee (RNC) Reince Priebus as White House chief of staff. Senator
Jeff Sessions (R-AL) is a potential for Secretary of Defense. The grapevine has
been quieter in terms of a possible Secretary of Education—maybe because
president-elect Trump has said repeatedly that he intends to diminish that
agency’s role. Ben Carson has been
floated as a possibility. Williamson M. Evers and Gerard Robinson are on his
transition team working on education policy. Evers is a research fellow at the
conservative Hoover Institution; Robinson, who was Florida’s commissioner of
education for a year, is a research fellow at the American Enterprise
Institute. Trump has also suggested that he might pick someone from
business for the post. He has vowed to downsize the Department of Education
(ED) and his surrogates have pointed specifically to ED’s Office for Civil
Rights, which oversees Title IX enforcement, as a likely target.
Similarly, little more can be said of the
future White House’s plans for education policy. The President-elect has put
forth broad proposals with not much details related to early childhood through
postsecondary education. He has trumpeted school choice and getting
“corruption” out of public schools. In higher education, it’s worth noting that
Trump’s enthusiasm for reducing the role of the Department of Education –
including staff reductions – is at odds with his left-leaning student loan
forgiveness plan. It remains to be seen how exactly a Trump Administration will
impact ongoing implementation efforts of the Every Student Succeeds Act
(ESSA), expected efforts to reauthorize the Higher Education Act (HEA),
or any further work on career and technical education legislation. It is almost certain that Secretary of
Education John King’s main regulatory packages will be revised, scrapped, or at
the very least left unenforced. The
“supplement, not supplant” regulations that are expected shortly and that have
been the subject of hearings and missives between ED and Capitol Hill will
almost certainly be rewritten next year, assuming Secretary King proceeds with
his current approach. The recently released
regulatory package related to tracking college of education graduates as they
enter classrooms is also likely to go unenforced. States will still have to file ESSA
accountability plans next year, although they may be shorter on detail now.
On Capitol Hill, election results suggest
that there will not be major shakeups in the leaders (and expected leaders) of
the education committees. There will be some churn in membership of the panels,
undoubtedly, and those moves will materialize in coming weeks and months.
In the short-term, a lame-duck Congress will arrive in Washington with really
only one item on their “must-do” list: resolving FY 2017 spending. NCTM and the STEM education community
continue to hope for a spending bill that invests adequately in the new Student
Support and Academic Enrichment Grant program during that debate. Adequate funds for professional development
for teachers is also a concern. It is
hoped that this Congress will spend time on these important decisions and not
rush to complete a flawed spending plan in the interest of clearing the decks
for a new president and Congress.
The final weeks of the 114th
Congress and the Obama Administration will be full of activity. Education advocates will be watching.
Della B. Cronin is a principal at Washington Partners, LLC.