So, You Want to Be U.S. Secretary of Education?

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In these roles, it’s easy to get discouraged. Reich recalls a stretch, a year into his tenure, when he was in a “foul mood” because it was so hard to get any traction for his spending plans. He groused, “Deficit reduction is the only game in town.” (If only!) Eventually, his chief of staff let him have it:

You’re the captain. People watch you for subtle cues about whether our team is winning or losing, and whether they’re doing what you want them to. Every one of the assistant secretaries and their deputies, along with hundreds of senior staff around here, see that hangdog look in your eyes, the way your shoulders droop . . . What did you think government would be like, anyway? Did you suppose you could snap your fingers . . . and America would change? That’s just arrogance, Mr. Secretary. Pure arrogance.

Becoming a “public servant” doesn’t mean one’s been given a license to radically remake the country. The license to act boldly needs to be earned; it requires credibility and broad support. I’m struck at how many government appointees (who haven’t been elected to anything, mind you) don’t get this. When I recall some of education’s crash-and-burn moments of the past decade, from the Common Core to teacher evaluation to student loan “forgiveness,” it’s clear that too many federal and state officials mistook a job title for a magic wand. I suspect that this kind of haughty, “shut-up-and-follow” tack has undercut responsible education governance and fueled the rise of today’s “sugar-frosted” education politics.

In my favorite passage from his book, Reich reflects on the difference between policy advocacy and policymaking—between pipe dreams and real-world politics. He writes:

I recall my classes at Harvard. Some of my students used to regard policy-making as a matter of finding the “right” answer to a public problem. Politics was a set of obstacles which had to be circumvented so the “right” answer could be implemented. Policy was clean—it could be done on a computer. Politics was dirty—unpredictable, passionate, sometimes mean-spirited or corrupt. Policy was good; politics, a necessary evil.

I’d spend entire courses trying to disabuse them. I’d ask them how they knew they had the “right” answer. They’d dazzle me with techniques—cost-benefit analyses, probability and statistics, regression analysis. Their math was flawless. But—I’d ask again—how did they know they had the right answer?

They never did. At most, policy wonks can help the public deliberate the likely consequences of various choices. But they can’t presume to make the choices. Democracy is disorderly and sometimes dismaying, but it is the only source of wisdom on this score.

Whatever polls show in the moment, Reich muses, the public often “doesn’t know what it wants until it has an opportunity to debate and consider.” And the public is often prone to changing its mind. (That’s how K–12 accountability could poll at 90 percent in the run-up to 2001’s No Child Left Behind, then bleed support once people saw it in practice.) The job of public officials isn’t simply to do big things—it’s to educate and persuade, to listen and course-correct.

If you’re not up for the requisite frustration and perspiration, you’re not up for the job.

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