Later this month, President-elect Donald Trump’s secretary of education will take office and confront a whirlwind of challenges. Just for starters, American students have continued to experience a worrisome decline in academic performance; meanwhile, the Department of Education is still struggling to recover from the FAFSA fiasco and has to restart student-loan payments for millions of borrowers. And that’s all before we get to programs, budgets, efforts to downsize the department, or anything else. To get a sense of the challenges awaiting the next secretary of education, I thought it worth seeking some insight from someone who’s been there—namely, Trump’s previous one, philanthropist and school choice champion Betsy DeVos. Here’s what she had to say.
—Rick
Rick: What’s the biggest challenge that confronts a secretary of education on day one?
DeVos: I think each secretary walks into a significant problem of some sort. For Linda McMahon, if she’s confirmed, it’s pretty clearly going to be the FAFSA and, more broadly, the total mess that she will inherit at Federal Student Aid (FSA). This hasn’t gotten nearly the attention it deserves. Not only did the Biden administration completely botch, if not break, the FAFSA form itself, but they’ve also destroyed the underpinnings of the federal student-loan portfolio. Remember: This is supposed to be an asset for the U.S. government. I think there’s a real question as to whether the portfolio is worth much of anything at all. They haven’t made anyone pay back their loans in a serious way, which was the bedrock principle of the program. Consequently, the machinery of managing the loans is in disarray, and there’s no easy fix.
On top of that, there’s now a huge credibility problem at FSA. [Secretary of Education Miguel] Cardona’s failure to launch a functional FAFSA process undercut students and families’ trust. Schools kept getting faulty data, breaking their trust as well. Their illegal student-loan “forgiveness” scheme broke the public’s trust. And that’s without even getting into the reputational damage colleges have done to themselves.
Rick: How long did it take for your team to take shape at the department?
DeVos: The whole process of onboarding a team was certainly an obstacle for me. I had numerous assistant secretary nominees who waited more than a year to be confirmed by the Senate. There was no good reason for that; none of them faced serious objections. Some of that is the nature of the Senate calendar, but much of that was Democrats’ continual objections seemingly for no reason but to spite us. Those kinds of delays impede your ability to get things done.
It’s also a process to get the White House to sign off on the right mix of people to populate the roles. There are a lot of competing priorities in making those hiring decisions.
Rick: Who can the new secretary look to for counsel as she’s settling in? Any lessons you can share about the risks of turning to the wrong sources for advice?
DeVos: I first sought the advice of those dealing with ED’s policies every day. I received great counsel from governors and state chiefs about what was and wasn’t working. I was also very fortunate to have two leaders in Congress who really knew the “ins and outs” of the place in Representative Virginia Foxx and Senator Lamar Alexander. Lamar, of course, had been secretary himself, so his advice was particularly salient. I’ve been offering that same type of support for Linda since she’s likely to be the next secretary.
I think the biggest risk is taking counsel from the “experts” that populate the alphabet soup of D.C.’s education lobby. Many are bought and paid for by the unions and will do anything to protect the current system and their power. Washington is full of people who will tell you “how things are supposed to be done,” but that advice is almost always in the service of systems, not kids.
Rick: During your tenure, your team had concerns about leaks in the department and resistance from some career staff. What are the challenges of working with career officials, especially when you’re seen as a disruptor, and how can a secretary overcome them?
DeVos: They were more than concerns. They leaked everything they got their hands on. We saw it in the newspapers routinely. And many didn’t even hide their animus toward us. I recall one bureaucrat who proudly displayed every negative news article published about me or our team on her office door.
Our experience overcoming those challenges was twofold. First, be firm. They will put up a fight, but most of them will ultimately respect that they have a new boss and do what needs to be done. Second, seek out those who truly want to help kids. They may number less than 10 percent of the permanent workforce, but many—especially the long-time staff—are there for the right reasons. In our experience, having even a dozen really great career staff leaders who wanted to be partners with us made a significant difference.
Rick: What’s it take to establish a good working relationship with the White House and the other agencies?
DeVos: Time and effort. It’s no different than any other relationship. You have to work on it and invest in it. Trust is earned through consistency over time. I liken it to being a good teammate in sports. You have your own individual metrics and goals, but the team ultimately wins if you make the effort and learn to work together efficiently. You probably didn’t read about this in the news, but the Cabinet in President Trump’s first term had a very good working relationship. We all grew quite close, personally. The truth is working with the president wasn’t much different. He truly had an open-door policy—which is an uncommon thing to say about the Oval Office—and he cared deeply that each of us was succeeding.
Rick: In 2017, just like this year, you took office with unified Republican control of Congress. In that kind of environment, what’s it take to establish productive relationships with the Hill and get priorities moving?
DeVos: Yes, though it’s important to recall that the Republican Senate majority was very thin between 2017 and 2019—starting at 52 and shrinking to 50 or 51 votes at various points. That required the vice president to tie-break a lot of things, as I’m acutely aware. The 2025 majority is much stronger in the Senate and hopefully will be in the House as well following some special elections.
Congress is perhaps the most change-averse entity I’ve ever dealt with. Many members of Congress talk a big game, but when it comes time to vote, many are more comfortable with maintaining the status quo. That requires employing change-management techniques, including spending a lot of time talking through benefits and ways to mitigate risk. I spent an immense amount of time on the Hill during my four years. Prioritizing students over systems forces people to rethink long-held assumptions, even within the party and especially within the appropriations process.
Rick: What are a couple of those assumptions that need to be rethought? And what would it mean for legislation or appropriations?
DeVos: The biggest assumption is that the programs are working. They’re not, and when being honest, most people acknowledge as much. I recall our first internal budget meeting in 2017, where the career staff pointed out that the only federal program that had empirical research showing its success was the charter school program. Similarly, I had numerous discussions with teachers and administrators about how poorly Title II—the funding for teacher professional development—functions. The list of examples goes on. This was one of many reasons we ultimately proposed block granting the funds to the states—in most programs, the money is thinly spread with too many restrictions for it to really be productive.
Rick: I’ve long held that the coverage of your tenure was anything but fair-minded. Given your experience, any advice for the next secretary when it comes to navigating the media?
DeVos: Your critiques of this have been really spot-on, and I don’t just say that because they accrue to my benefit. The education press corps is a truly agenda-driven group. Most of them assumed the worst of us, with very few putting in any effort to understand where we were coming from on policy decisions.
What I learned is you can’t let that distract you. If you’re pushing for meaningful change, those whose apple carts you intend to upset will come after you. It’s the cost of doing business. I also learned that you can counter slanted coverage by going around the legacy media. There are so many ways to talk directly to the American people. That includes talking to local news, which is often much more fair-minded than national outlets. I didn’t hold many press conferences in D.C., but I did one in almost every town I visited.
My advice to Linda, if confirmed, and to anyone stepping into a public leadership role is to stay focused on your mission. Know why you’re there and keep your eyes on the people you serve, not the chattering class or legacy media. For me, the louder the media noise became, the more I knew we were hitting nerves and making a difference.
Rick: When it comes to education, Republicans have long suffered from a thin bench of potential appointees. When you left office, this was a challenge that you and some of your former deputies discussed pretty frankly. Have things changed since 2017?
DeVos: Dramatically so. There have been intentional efforts around this in D.C., but importantly, the states—especially those led by Republican governors—have really dug into education issues and advanced reforms over the past several years. This has created a new talent pipeline that didn’t exist before. Similarly to the ’90s, we again have “education governors” like Iowa’s Kim Reynolds, Florida’s Ron DeSantis, and Arkansas’ Sarah Sanders today. That changes—and improves—the landscape significantly.
Rick: During your tenure, the teachers’ unions were extraordinarily critical of you. How much did that matter? And, given that McMahon is already being fiercely attacked by union leaders, any suggestions on how she should respond, if confirmed?
DeVos: It was to be expected, so I’m not sure it was that impactful. I was unapologetically for empowering parents, and they were unapologetically for protecting the system. We were diametrically opposed on our priorities.
The only place I think the unions’ opposition mattered was the tone they set and the millions they spent amplifying that message, both with their allies in the Democrat Party and in school communities. I think their shrill, over-the-top criticisms served as a permission slip for others to assume the worst about us.
I think of our work on Title IX as an example. Randi Weingarten alleged that I wasn’t serious about combating sexual assault. My response was that I approached the issue first and foremost as a woman, a mother, a grandmother, a person of faith, and really just as a decent human being. Her accusation was just absurd. But the language took hold and created conditions for others to say even more vile things.
With any such criticisms, I’d urge the next secretary to fight back twice as hard. I think the tides have turned, following how the unions overplayed their hands during COVID. The public is much more attune to their games.
Rick: What’s the best piece of advice you got after you were nominated by Trump?
DeVos: It was something that ended up being a motto of sorts in our office: Focus on doing something good for kids every day. There are going to be endless distractions, problems, hiccups, frustrations, and the like, but if you come to work every morning with fresh eyes and that posture, it’s easy to keep moving forward.
Rick: What’s one thing you wish you’d known on your first day that you learned later?
DeVos: It may be a bit cliché, but the time does go fast. When you start, four years seems like a long time; the truth is it goes by incredibly quickly. I wished I’d pushed harder and faster from the jump, appreciating this phenomenon fully.
Doing anything in Washington is hard and slow. There were policies we advanced that had broad, bipartisan support, like expanding career and technical education options, and even those were painfully slow to move forward. Some of that legislation is still stalled in Congress today. In that sense, every minute counts.
Upon reflection, I think we also spent too much time talking to people who had no interest in listening to what we had to say. So much of Washington is entrenched in their positions, perspectives, and ways. You really have to focus on those who are intellectually curious enough to consider there might be a different and better way to do things—and who are self-assured enough to say so.