Education Week - January 18, 2017 - 18

Policy Implications Loom When Transition Reshapes Staff
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

further ideologically from the president. You definitely have that" in the
case of the Education Department
and Trump.
That doesn't mean the department's day-to-day business is going
to shift dramatically overnight, said
John Hudak, who is the deputy director for the Center for Effective
Public Management at Brookings.
"Betsy DeVos is not going to completely redesign the way the Edu-

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cation Department works," he said.
Trump, he added, has nominated
a number of Cabinet officials who,
like, DeVos, have more experience
and familiarity with business than
government.
If she's confirmed by the U.S. Senate and assumes the helm at the department, he said DeVos will likely
find that "the secretary of education
is not the CEO of the Department of
Education." That is a very important
distinction, Hudak said.
Unlike some past education secre-

taries, who had served as governors
or as district or state schools chiefs,
DeVos hasn't led a big bureaucracy.
Though DeVos is no stranger to
politics-she chaired the Michigan
Republican Party for about a half
a dozen years-she hasn't worked
professionally at a federal agency,
on Capitol Hill, or in public schools.
DeVos' background and views
make her either a "breath of fresh
air"-the description used by William Hansen, who served as deputy
secretary of education under Presi-

dent George W. Bush-or "outside
the norm," as Carmel Martin, an
assistant education secretary under
President Barack Obama, put it.
But the two agree that the Trump
administration's picks for key top positions in the department will also
say a lot about its direction.
In particular, the deputy secretary, the undersecretary, and the assistant secretaries overseeing civil
rights, elementary and secondary
education, and planning, evaluation,
and policy could be pivotal players. It

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Kayenta Unified School District
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Clyde McBride, the director of career and
technical education in Kayenta, Ariz., runs a
powerhouse pre-veterinary-sciences program
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that propels them to college, prepares them for
the workforce, and puts them at the center
of supporting their communities.

could take weeks or even months for
all those appointees-most of whom
will need to be confirmed by the
Senate-to be in place. That means
senior career staff will temporarily
step up to fill their roles, including,
if need be, the secretary's.
Top appointments will "send a
strong signal both from a management standpoint and a [policy]
standpoint," said Hansen, who
is now the president and CEO of
USA Funds, a nonprofit that promotes college preparation, access,
and success.
Besides DeVos, the Trump team
has already made one other important personnel pick of interest to
educators: Rob Goad, who took leave
from his position as an education
aide to Rep. Luke Messer, R-Ind., to
serve with Trump's campaign, has
been tapped as an education adviser on the White House Domestic
Policy Council. Messer is one of the
most prominent champions of school
choice in Congress.

Longtime Tensions
But the top players are just a
small fraction of the 150 political
appointees who will join the department. The agency also has more
than 4,000 career staff members,
who handle everything from monitoring states' and districts' use of
Title I aid for disadvantaged students to maintaining the agency's
website.
The department's employees, most
of whom are career staff, are, on average, more seasoned and better-educated than their colleagues at other
agencies, Mann said. She noted that
47 percent of department employees
have an education beyond a bachelor's degree, compared with an average of 27 percent across all Cabinetlevel agencies. And 58 percent have
worked for the federal government
10 years or longer, compared with
an average of 54 percent across Cabinet-level agencies.
There are almost always tensions
between the career staffers and the
political appointees, no matter which
party is in charge, especially at the
beginning of an administration, people who have served in each of those
roles said.
Some political appointees are told
not to trust the career employees,
said Zollie Stevenson, who served as
the director of student achievement
and school accountability programs, a
career position. "We were viewed
as the folks who would slow things
down."
That is a counterproductive misperception, said Stevenson, who is now
the acting vice president for academic affairs at Philander Smith
College in Little Rock, Ark. Lack of
input from civil servants-who often
have a better understanding of how
states and districts operate-hindered implementation of some major
initiatives, he said, including the No
Child Left Behind Act's guarantee of
free tutoring for students in struggling schools.
Tom Corwin, who spent decades
as a top career employee on K-12
budget issues, said he didn't think

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Education Week - January 18, 2017

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