Photo courtesy of The Guardian.
Dear Commons Community,
Conservative Rick Hess , Director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, had an essay in yesterday’s Education Week chiming in on President Donald Trump’s first 100 days as have already felt like being “trapped inside a Russian novel—and we’re barely underway.” Entitled, “Trump’s 100 Days: The Good, the Bad, and the Confounding,” here is his entire essay.
Here’s my take on what we’ve seen in K-12. Be forewarned, you’ll need to look elsewhere for a blistering denunciation or an exercise in cheerleading. That’s because I’m feeling pretty conflicted. On the one hand, I support Team Trump’s priorities and vision. On the other, I think responsible government is less a matter of what you intend to do than what you actually do. And, on that score, there’s much to give me pause.
Character is destiny, in Russian novels as in life, and what we’re seeing reflects Trump’s. But unlike Trump 1.0, when his staff often tempered his impulsiveness, bombast, and distaste for detail, we’re getting the Full Trump this go-round. I didn’t fully anticipate the resulting chaos. Much of what’s happened over the past three-plus months has startled me. It’s not the priorities that have surprised me: I anticipated the emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion; gender ideology; school choice; and reducing the federal footprint. But I’ve been taken aback by the number and sweep of executive orders, the blunderbuss posture, and just how indiscriminate DOGE proved to be.
What’s surprised me in particular? First, what we’ve seen has been far less deliberate than I’d expected, given the Trump team’s thick (metaphorical) playbook and deep bench of talent. Second, the prominence and relentless aggression of the DOGE chainsaw. Third, the taste for confrontation, even when it made it tougher to rack up wins. Fourth, the failure to coherently make the case for many of their more controversial actions.
Look, I thought DOGE had enormous potential. I’ve long argued that the U.S. Department of Education could be run far more efficiently and responsibly—as have others, like Mark Schneider, my AEI colleague and a former director of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). The department suffered under a troubled culture and a padded payroll, and its contracts would benefit from a good scouring. Moreover, previous administrations have lacked the will (or even the desire) to tackle any of this. So I was inclined to give DOGE’s grip-it-and-rip-it tactics a chance. But I noted that success would depend on the coherence of what followed. What we got was a capriciousness and clumsiness that raised red flags. DOGE’s mission was to promote efficiency and ensure money is spent on the things that matter. Well, months after ED’s contracts were yanked and staff were first let go, it’s entirely unclear that this will produce a more effective agency—and not just a smaller one. There’s been a disconcerting lack of clarity about what’s being cut, the rationale for specific cuts, how much money is being saved, or how things will work going forward.
Take the National Assessment of Educational Progress. DOGE either ignored the secretary of education’s promise to preserve NAEP or didn’t realize that it was cutting NAEP-essential staff and contracts (similar lapses, of course, have been evident across a number of agencies). While the small NAEP unit attached to the National Assessment Governing Board was preserved, that team is charged with management, strategy, and communications. The staff members who actually coordinated and crunched the data for NAEP got wiped out, along with more than 90 percent of IES. As the administration scrambles to recover from this misstep, NAEP is getting put back together with bubble gum and duct tape, while chunks of it (including the U.S. history test) are jettisoned. I get less of an impression of streamlining than of DOGE just gutting everything in its path.
Trump’s executive order to dismantle the Department of Education is better understood as an emphatic memo asking the secretary of education to do what she was already doing (since abolishing the department or moving components to other agencies requires an act of Congress). That’s why many of us assumed the president would urge Congress to act and then focus on things he could control. Instead, the long-shot push to dismantle ED plays on, even as Team Trump reassures everyone that no spending cuts are coming to ED’s major programs like Title I, IDEA, or Pell Grants (though there’s been talk of moving IDEA, for instance, to the Department of Health and Human Services—a move that would require not-in-the-cards congressional approval). Trump’s budget proposal does call for zeroing out Head Start, though it’s unclear whether Congress will go along. Moreover, the push to shrink Washington’s role sits uneasily alongside the new executive order on artificial intelligence, which calls for Uncle Sam to actively promote AI integration in schools.
Then there’s DEI. Obviously, those who support DEI hate everything Trump has done on this count. If you’re like me, though, you think the administration has a compelling case. Federal civil rights law requires schools and colleges to abide by the Civil Rights Act’s prohibition on discrimination based on race, color, or national origin. It seems obvious that when school officials are organizing race-based affinity groups or restricting programs based on student race or ethnicity, they are violating federal law—and creating a “hostile learning environment” for some students. Moreover, since 2021, four years of state-level legislative and legal efforts have offered up lessons about how to craft directives and legislation that are broadly popular and take First Amendment concerns seriously. I expected the administration’s ability to draw on those experiences would be an enormous boon.
Well, that hard-earned wisdom sure seems to have fallen by the wayside. The administration’s executive order and “Dear Colleague Letter” on DEI did little to distinguish between discriminatory conduct by schools, on one hand, and classroom instruction or materials that touched on matters of race, on the other. The federal government has both a right and an obligation to tackle the first. But not only is ED statutorily barred from interfering in matters of curriculum and instruction, the sense that it wants to raises First Amendment concerns—and reframes its efforts not as a response to DEI excess but a worrisome exercise in illiberalism. That’s made it easy for blue state chiefs to reject the administration’s DEI directive while credibly arguing that they’re not “pro-DEI” (unpopular) but “pro-First Amendment” (very popular). It’s also given Trump’s opponents a strong legal hand, as seen last week when three different federal judges ruled that the DEI directive doesn’t pass legal muster.
The same kind of good, bad, and confounding analysis applies to much of Trump’s agenda. On gender identity, his EO clarifying that Title IX’s use of sex means “biological sex” was necessary and appropriate. After all, the Biden administration sought to unilaterally rewrite Title IX to include gender identity and then force schools to overhaul policies governing locker rooms, dormitories, and more. Trump’s EO was a much-needed reaffirmation of what the law actually says. The issue is with how Team Trump has followed up. Trump personally confronted the governor of Maine over its transgender sports policy, threatening to strip federal K-12 funds—and then rapidly did so. If it were to stand, this would be a stunning expansion of presidential authority in education. But it’s not likely to stand. Republican attorneys general successfully challenged Biden’s Title IX guidance, and Maine will likely prevail, too. Meanwhile, Trump’s move to strip vast sums based on an executive order is a lousy precedent, an odd move for a president who talks of empowering states and a tactic that invites backlash against an otherwise popular policy.
On school choice, there’s been a genial executive order, ED has (thankfully) dropped the poison pill regulations that the Biden administration imposed on the charter school program, and the department has invited states to apply for waivers and is looking to make programs more choice-friendly. Congress may adopt a groundbreaking tax credit for scholarship programs in this year’s budget reconciliation bill. But the reality is that choice is mostly a state issue. The Every Student Succeeds Act already grants states enormous flexibility that they’re not using, and empowering states is less about rhetoric than about changing laws or overhauling regulations. Thus far, as best I can tell, there’s been little obvious activity on tackling rules and regulations.
Like I said up top, I’m conflicted. I’ve been impressed by the willingness to mount fights that are overdue, necessary, and challenging. But I can’t look past the disorder, opacity, and disregard for established law. Doing so much via executive action is a horrific norm that serves no one well. These proclamations can be reversed on day one by the next president. Conservatives were rightly livid when Biden’s White House operated this way, and ratcheting things up will eventually come back to haunt Republicans.
As we hit the 100-day mark, there’s still much time to course-correct. I’m rooting for a recalibration, for some sensible restraint and respect for due process. Trump has altered course on priorities like tariffs and student visas; next to that, bringing more discipline to the education agenda is an easy lift. And it certainly appears that DOGE’s role in education is waning. Elon Musk is mostly out, and DOGE has already cut all it readily can. Meanwhile, veteran K-12 state chiefs Penny Schwinn and Kirsten Baesler will be stepping into senior roles soon, if confirmed by the Senate. What we’ve seen thus far could be a product of who’s been at the table, so these shifts could yield something of a reset.
Team Trump risks taking issues where they entered with broad-based public support and turning them into political losers. Now, some in the administration believe that, if they only move fast and forcefully enough, they’ll be able to drive lasting cultural changes. Some deem education such a captive of the left that there’s no real price to be paid for breakage—that there’ll be no blowback. But that’s a dicey bet.
The past decade has shown that over-the-top tactics may serve mostly to alienate normies and energize the opposition. The way to make lasting change is by enacting legislation. Republicans entered 2025 with public support on much of this and control the House and the Senate, yet Congress has mostly been on the sidelines. Meanwhile, Trump is bleeding support. During Biden’s first two years, Democrats could have legislated on student loans or amended Title IX to reflect gender. They didn’t even try, instead they left it to dubious White House freelancing. That proved to be bad politics and a recipe for reversal. I suspect the same will prove true here.
It was Vice President J.D. Vance who said in 2022 while running for the Senate, “We’re going to have to get pretty wild, and pretty far out there, and go in directions that a lot of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with.” Well, so far, Trump 2.0 has delivered on that promise. But plunging presidential popularity, internal discord, and market gyrations are creating fierce headwinds. We’re 100 days in, with 1,361 left to go, and I can’t yet say whether what we’ve seen thus far is a prologue or a plot device. I suppose this is what it feels like to be a character in a Russian novel.
Also, in keeping with the Russian novel metaphor, Trump has convinced himself that his delusions are reality!
Tony
