Linda McMahon and President Donald Trump. Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

During Donald Trump’s first presidential term and the Joe Biden presidential administration, proponents of education reform declared their movement dead. Their well-funded campaign to blame teachers for low scores on standardized tests, threaten public schools with closures, and ramp up market competition from charter schools was “over” and had “died off,” reform proponents said, highlighting the “ending.”

Donald Trump’s rise in the Republican Party and his 2024 presidential win also posed challenges for education reform advocates.

As the 2024 presidential campaign raged, Axios found “public education reform missing from 2024 presidential platforms.” Prominent reform advocate Chester E. Finn Jr. lamented in the conservative education policy journal, Education Next, in 2023, “By omitting the longstanding ‘ed-reform agenda,’ the Trump team is not only departing from forty years of GOP education priorities, but also seems to not be making a play for suburban moms, independents, or Democrats, maybe not even for Republicans beyond his ‘base.’”

As Trump was about to take office in January 2025, Education Week reported that “[s]weeping education reforms is not a priority” for the incoming Trump administration.

“It’s hard to be optimistic about education reform in the wake of the [2024] election,” wrote Michael J. Petrilli, a longtime education reform advocate and president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

“Education reformers should respond to the election with some critical self-reflection,” wrote Mind Trust CEO Brandon Brown, a prominent charter school advocate, who accused his fellow education reformers of being “in a professional and cultural bubble… [that runs] the risk of not truly understanding the diverse communities we serve.”

However, the negative outlook of the reform crowd changed in January 2025 with the nomination of Penny Schwinn as the deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Education under Linda McMahon, Trump’s choice for secretary of education.

“Schwinn’s nomination offers hope that Uncle Sam could turn his attention back toward evidence and excellence,” wrote Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s Dale Chu, noting “her belief in using state assessment data to drive decisions, ensuring that progress was both measurable and targeted.”

Another Fordham executive, Robert Pondiscio, opined, “Penny Schwinn’s nomination is an opportunity to refocus on what matters: ensuring that America’s schools fulfill their twin missions of cultural transmission and competence.”

Arne Duncan, the secretary of education under former Democratic President Barack Obama and an ardent reform acolyte, praised Schwinn as “a serious person” and “smart.”

But what makes Schwinn an especially good match for the Trump administration has nothing to do with education policy. Instead,........

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