Betsy DeVos Must Master the Art of Persuasion

The election of Donald Trump has fundamentally shaken the education establishment. The teachers' unions went all-in on Hillary Clinton, and most education "reformers" were rooting for her as well. Trump's nomination of Betsy DeVos for secretary of education left the unions apoplectic and reformers scratching their heads. On the one hand, DeVos might be the most school choice-friendly secretary of education in history. On the other, many centrist reformers feel like she's not quite one of them.

And that's for the best. DeVos stands at a crossroads, and the path she chooses will determine whether her tenure will transform or significantly set back the cause of expanding choice and opportunity. Will she govern as a principled conservative, respecting the limits of the federal role and relying on persuasion to make her case? Or will she govern like the "conservative" mirror image of her Obama administration predecessors?

DeVos may well be tempted to do the latter. After all, on the campaign trail Donald Trump's proposed an aggressive, federally-directed school choice plan. He promised $20 billion in new federal investments that could be coupled with an additional $110 billion in state spending to provide vouchers to every student living in poverty. I can't imagine this plan coming to fruition, but DeVos could do a lot with a tenth of the federal money. For example, she could replicate the Obama administration's Race to the Top program, this time offering states funding in exchange for adopting school choice programs.

That temptation should be resisted. While the Obama administration succeeded in getting states to adopt the items on its agenda, those policies were poorly implemented and faced significant political blowback. That should have surprised no one. After all, the federal government can make states do things, but it can't make them do them well. And when federal dollars are used to short-circuit careful political deliberation and deep grassroots buy-in, it's a surefire recipe for poor policy implementation and popular backlash. Just look at the Common Core, which went from uncontroversial to politically toxic once the Department of Education got involved. If the Department of Education puts its thumb on the scale in favor of school choice, it could turn the already-controversial issue positively radioactive.

But there is a more principled and more promising approach, and Betsy DeVos is uniquely suited to take it. She could opt for the path of persuasion. As a conservative, DeVos is more conscious of the limits of federal power than her predecessors, and as chairman of the American Federation for Children, she has significant experience convincing state lawmakers to launch school choice initiatives. It would be not only refreshing but also likely effective if DeVos testified in front of state legislatures in favor of school choice initiatives. While there's broad Republican support for school choice, it's by no means universal, and the secretary's presence could go a long way in swaying fence-sitting Republicans. But her presence need not be partisan. Under her direction, the AFC placed a special emphasis on supporting choice-friendly Democrats. As such, DeVos is uniquely positioned to help build bipartisan majorities in favor of expanding choice.

Any secretary of education could bully states into adopting school choice policies. But Betsy DeVos is uniquely suited to help build bipartisan state coalitions from the bottom up. While that approach might not rack up flashy victories for the Trump administration in the first hundred days, it would pay much greater dividends in the long run for students who need better educational options.

This piece originally appeared at the Washington Examiner

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Max Eden is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

This piece originally appeared in Washington Examiner