Vice President Kamala Harris already selected a former teacher—Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz—as her running mate. Should she win the White House next month, she’ll have the chance to make another high-profile education hire: her secretary of education.
Who will that person be? Democratic-aligned education advocates and experts stress that they want someone with deep management experience to helm the U.S. Department of Education.
But, given the unusual nature of this year’s presidential race, they aren’t ready to stake a claim on a particular contender.
During some election cycles, there’s been a relatively obvious answer to the education secretary question. Back in 2008, for instance, education advocates who watch federal policy and politics closely correctly guessed as early as August that the job would go to Arne Duncan. At the time, he served as the CEO of the Chicago schools—in then-candidate Barack Obama’s hometown—and was the future president’s basketball buddy.
This election cycle, it’s much tougher to read the tea leaves. For one thing, President Joe Biden’s secretary pick, Miguel Cardona, is still in office. That makes it tricky for Democrats in Washington to publicly recommend someone other than the man who currently holds the job.
Last fall, Cardona told Politico that he would be up for serving a second term if Biden—who at the time was expected to be the Democratic nominee—won re-election.
He hasn’t addressed the question since Harris took Biden’s place on the ticket, and it’s too early to discuss his plans following the election, a department spokesman said.
Cardona “is proud of the work he’s done as part of the Biden-Harris administration to improve academic achievement, teacher diversity, student mental health, school safety, career pathways, college affordability and completion, and supporting multilingualism,” the spokesman said. “It would be premature to comment on hypotheticals.”
Privately, many Democrats in Washington who are invested in education policy don’t expect—or want—Cardona to stick around.
A former teacher, principal, and district leader who served as Connecticut’s state schools chief for less than two years before being tapped as education secretary, Cardona has demonstrated that he does not have the management expertise to oversee a sprawling federal bureaucracy, they say.
Particularly problematic: Cardona’s perceived lack of vision for education policy and, especially, his rollout of a streamlined Free Application for Federal Student Aid.
The form, which was released about three months behind schedule, was riddled with technical defects that held up submissions and caused significant frustration for student borrowers. The department also failed to answer more than 4 million calls for assistance with the form, a recent GAO investigation found.
One former Democratic congressional aide called the troubled FAFSA rollout the biggest display of incompetence in the department’s more than four-decade-long history.
The education department spokesman disputed that narrative, saying that under Cardona’s leadership, the department “effectively managed the unprecedented reopening of schools” following the pandemic and distributed nearly $190 billion in relief aid to school districts and colleges.
And despite the challenges with FAFSA, more than 15 million forms have been processed since the launch of the new form, the submissions gap has fallen to under 2 percent behind the previous year’s submissions, and half a million more students are eligible for Pell Grants for low-income students compared with last year, the spokesman said.
Senate control may be a determining factor
The Cardona question aside, Harris’ choice will depend not only on what happens in the presidential race but in the battle for control of the Senate, where Democrats currently hold a narrow majority. If the chamber remains under Democratic control, Harris will have much more running room in choosing her education secretary—not to mention the rest of her Cabinet.
But if, as many political prognosticators expect, Republicans take control of the chamber, even by a seat or two, she’ll have to factor in a potentially grueling confirmation process for every Cabinet spot.
For education, that means a tough slog for any candidate who has ever embraced diversity, equity, and inclusion, a toxic concept for many Republicans.
“Anyone who has ever uttered the letters D-E-I will have a tough time” getting confirmed by a GOP Senate, one former Democratic Hill staffer said.
Under that scenario, if Harris wants her pick to win confirmation, she’ll have to choose with three key Republican senators in mind, said David Cleary, who served as an aide to Republicans on the House and Senate education committees between 2002 and 2023, including as the Republican staff director for the Senate education committee.
They include Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who would likely be the chairman of the Senate education committee under GOP control and would decide whether Harris’ pick even comes up for a vote in committee, as well as Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, two moderates who bucked their party to vote against President Donald Trump’s pick for secretary, Betsy DeVos, back in 2017.
To gain their support, Harris’ nominee will need to be a proven leader with a record of strong management—not someone like Cardona, who was relatively unknown before he was tapped to join Biden’s Cabinet, Cleary said.
Even amid the uncertainty, key Democrats and organizations closely affiliated with the party are still willing to share their wish lists—anonymously for now, to keep from offending Cardona and company.
One caveat: Democrats interviewed for this story said they had not spoken directly to Harris’ campaign about who she is considering for the job. A Harris campaign spokeswoman did not respond to a request for information.
Governors top some Democrats’ wish lists
A prominent Democrat and a representative of a high-profile civil rights organization both said they want to see a governor or former governor in the role—a chief executive with experience managing an education system that extends from early childhood to postsecondary.
The prominent Democrat would prefer a governor who already has a strong relationship with Harris, Walz, or both. That would help elevate the secretary within the administration—and education in general, this Democrat said.
The Education Department can turn into a backwater agency when its leader doesn’t have a close relationship with the president, as Duncan did with Obama or Margaret Spellings did with former President George W. Bush, the Democrat added.
Given that, the dream education pick for some Democrats who work on education issues in Washington: North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, who served as attorney general in the Tar Heel State from 2001 until he assumed the governorship in 2017. His tenure as attorney general overlapped with Harris’ stint as California’s attorney general, and the two reportedly struck up a friendship.
In North Carolina, Cooper recently vetoed a bill that would have expanded a private school voucher program, calling it a “reckless waste” of taxpayer dollars. He also proposed raising teachers’ salaries and boosting funding for school construction in his most recent budget proposal.
Last year, Cooper declared that North Carolina public schools were facing a “state of emergency” due to the then-proposed voucher expansion, a parents’ bill of rights that restricts instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation that Cooper later vetoed, and thousands of teacher vacancies.
It’s an open question whether Cooper would be interested in the education job; if he’d want a post that’s considered higher-profile, such as attorney general; or if he’d prefer not to serve in the Cabinet at all. His last term as governor is up at the start of 2025.
Another possibility: Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, who served as the Badger State’s superintendent for public instruction from 2009 to 2019. Evers sought to steer state funding to schools that serve students in poverty and boost the presence of mental health providers in schools.
Evers also served as the president of the Council of Chief State School Officers—and made equity for disadvantaged students the centerpiece of his tenure. He worked as a teacher and principal before becoming superintendent of two Wisconsin school districts.
A secretary with classroom experience is a key priority for many educators and their advocates.
“I want someone who had to learn students’ names,” one Democratic source said.
But Evers is still in the middle of his second gubernatorial term. The Democratic Party may not want to vacate a governor’s mansion in a key purple state.
Another possibility: New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. Though her term doesn’t end until early 2027, her state is more reliably blue. As governor, Lujan Grisham boosted teacher pay and increased instructional-time requirements. She also enacted universal free prekindergarten for 4-year-olds.
Democrats associated with the so-called “reform” wing of the party—which tends to support standardized testing and charter schools, among other policies—like the idea of Jared Polis, the governor of Colorado and a charter school founder, as secretary.
As governor, Polis increased per-pupil spending, expanded all-day kindergarten, and provided universal free preschool. But it’s unclear if he would want the secretary job.
Teachers’ union leaders could also be in the running, particularly if the Democrats hold the Senate. That includes Becky Pringle, the president of the National Education Association, one former Democratic congressional staffer suggested.
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, whose name often surfaces as a possible secretary whenever there’s a Democrat in the White House, isn’t interested in the job, she said in an interview with Education Week. “I am happy where I am,” she said.
Instead of going with a governor, Harris could just look across the District of Columbia border into Maryland for an education secretary: A former Democratic Hill staffer suggested Carey Wright, the state’s superintendent of schools.
Before taking the top education job in deep-blue Maryland, Wright served in the same role in ruby-red Mississippi, where she was lauded for helping 4th graders make eye-popping progress on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, “the nation’s report card,” in a turnaround deemed the “Mississippi miracle.” That’s the kind of resume that could win bipartisan support, the former staffer said.
Typically, Democratic presidents choose their secretaries from the K-12 world—even though some argue much of the department’s purview is higher education. In fact, when he was campaigning for the White House in 2020, Biden repeatedly pledged to name a secretary who had been a classroom teacher.
But Harris could look to the higher education world for her pick, some sources speculated.
Leaders of 11 labor unions representing employees who work in higher education—including Pringle and Weingarten—sent a letter to Harris last month asking her to enact policies supporting postsecondary institutions, including selecting a secretary of education who demonstrates a clear record of “supporting higher education as a truly public good.”
It might be especially fitting if Harris—who would be the first graduate of a historically black college to serve as president—picked someone from an HBCU for the secretary post, such as Tony Allen, the president of Delaware State University, one Democratic source suggested.
