For education’s Never Trumpers, Schwinn’s nomination was disorienting. She is a former TFA recruit and charter-school leader who has a PhD and a history of working across the aisle. She’s more focused on curriculum than culture, is an achievement hawk, and is passionate about literacy. This makes her the kind of Republican that even staunch anti-Trumpers can embrace. (To see why, just peruse my exit interview with her following her tenure in Tennessee.) The coastal “school reform” community that inhales a steady diet of NPR and New York Times coverage assumed Trump’s second term would usher in a nightmarish hellscape—thus, the shock and relief at seeing Schwinn named to head up the department’s K–12 efforts.
For Trump enthusiasts who fear they’re being sold a bill of goods, the Schwinn appointment was equally disorienting. Some MAGA diehards who’ve been battling woke dogmas regarding race, gender, and equity lashed out at Schwinn’s nomination. In an X post with more than 1.5 million views, influential anti-DEI crusader Robby Starbuck urged Trump to pull the nomination, charging that the Tennessee Department of Education “embraced DEI” on Schwinn’s watch. A quick scan of conservative social media reveals that Starbuck has plenty of company.
I’ll be clear: I want to see Penny Schwinn confirmed. I know her to be a warrior for academic rigor, a get-things-done executive, and a leader with a deep streak of common-sense conservatism. That said, while I think Schwinn will do a terrific job, I also think the qualms are understandable. After all, putatively conservative education reformers and Republican officials really have spent most of the 21st century rolling over on culture and values.
From embracing race-based accountability in NCLB to eye-rolling at irate parents during the Common Core fights to allowing the casual infusion of DEI/“anti-racist” ideology into SEL, Republican leaders have seemed more interested in scoring points with progressive funders and allies than in pushing back. When the education blob declared that parental hostility to the Common Core was selfish, misinformed, and paranoid, lots of Republican officials and school reformers either echoed the charges or stood mute. The same Republican timidity was on display when parents spoke up against school closures or some truly grotesque dogmas, only to get slandered as bigots and racists by Democrats, the education establishment, and the mainstream media. That’s why groups like Moms for Liberty are on high alert for signs that Trump’s Department of Education is about to be co-opted.
Over the past decade, I’ve written again and again about the need for conservatives to stand up for basic principles of merit, rigor, and equality (see, for instance, here, here, here, or here), and I can report that, for most of that period, it was all brushed off by Republican officialdom. Indeed, until about 2022—when public frustration with campus indoctrination, the toxicity of DEI, and radical gender ideology finally broke through to popular consciousness—most Republican school chiefs and higher education impresarios didn’t lift a finger, all while proudly insisting that they didn’t want to be “distracted by culture wars.” That’s why populist distrust burns so brightly.
