Under Trump, the Education Department has been led by Secretary Betsy DeVos, who alienated many by casting public schools as failures and promoting alternatives to them. Through executive action and negotiations with Congress, Biden wants to bolster public schools.
He has promised hundreds of billions of dollars in new education spending, for preschool through college. He has proposed college debt forgiveness. And he wants to overturn a controversial regulation on sexual harassment and assault that universities and others strongly opposed.
He has also promised to appoint an educator as education secretary and likes to tell people that a teacher will join him in the White House. Jill Biden, an English professor at a community college in Northern Virginia, has said she plans to continue teaching as first lady.
“Teaching isn’t just what she does — it’s who she is,” Joe Biden said Saturday in a victory speech after being declared the winner of the presidential race. “For America’s educators, this is a great day: You’re going to have one of your own in the White House.”
With the election results clear, transition teams for every federal agency are beginning the work of assessing the state of each department, cataloguing Biden’s promises, determining what can be done by executive action and what needs congressional action, and setting priorities.