Eight months into his term, President Donald Trump is finally picking up the pace of nominating staff members to serve in the top ranks of the U.S. Department of Education. But he鈥檚 in filling the agency鈥檚 vacancies.
By this point in 2009, Obama had announced a nominee for every K-12 position in the department that requires Senate confirmation, an Education Week analysis has found. Trump, by contrast, has only tapped five of the dozen or so key players he needs to run the department.
So far, Trump has picked Mick Zais, a former South Carolina state chief, for deputy secretary; Jim Blew, a former state advocate who used to run the Walton Family Foundation, for assistant secretary of planning, evaluation, and policy analysis; Peter Oppenheim, a former aide to Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., for congressional relations; Tim Kelly, a Michigan state lawmaker, for career and technical education; and Carlos G. Mu帽iz, a former Florida deputy attorney general, as general counsel.
But other key positions, including the assistant secretaries for elementary and secondary education and civil rights, are being filled by temporary players. Both of those positions were filled within the first several months of the Obama administration.
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos blames the slow pace in part on paperwork delays.
鈥淚鈥檝e made decisions and the president has signed off on many of those decisions,鈥� she said in an interview. 鈥淚t鈥檚 the process of paperwork with the FBI and the [office of government ethics] that has taken months and months and months.鈥�
The vacancies have placed extra stress on the staff already in place, she added.
Heavy on State-Level Experience
Nearly all the people named to top posts at the department so far have some sort of experience at the state level, said Andy Smarick, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank in Washington.
Zais is a former South Carolina state chief. Kelly is a state lawmaker. Mu帽iz worked as deputy attorney general in Florida. Blew has worked at state-level advocacy organizations, including 50CAN and StudentsFirst, a state level organization started by former D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee.
And even Oppenheim, who spent much of his career on Capitol Hill, worked to give states more influence over K-12 policy as a key aide writing the Every Student Succeeds Act.
鈥淓very other administration I know in Washington, they hired a lot of people who were part of the D.C. orbit,鈥� said Smarick, who worked in the department during President George W. Bush鈥檚 administration. By contrast, 鈥渢hey are loading up on people with state-level experience. So the question becomes 鈥榳hat are they going to do with all of that experience. Everyone in high-level meetings may say 鈥榣et鈥檚 trust states.鈥� 鈥� Or, he said, they may use their state-level contacts to champion choice at the local level.
Another connecting theme: ties to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. DeVos herself used to sit on the board of the Foundation for Excellence in Education, the research and advocacy organization Gov. Bush started. Zais was a vocal supporter of Bush鈥檚 2016 presidential bid. Carlos Mu帽iz, the nominee for general counsel, worked for Bush as a deputy general counsel.
Some of the usual suspects in Washington didn鈥檛 want to join the Trump administration or work for a secretary as controversial as DeVos.
鈥淭here鈥檚 a lot of anxiety around what this administration is going to bring, and some people may think it鈥檚 pretty risky to go into these roles,鈥� said one source who had been approached about a job at the department earlier this year. 鈥淧otential staff may question whether it鈥檚 worth the risk, whether taking a job for this secretary could cause collateral damage to reputations and future opportunities in education.鈥�
