A few thoughts on state and national contests while we wait for votes to be counted:

I was in Louisville, Kentucky, last week to speak about my book Getting Education Right. As readers likely know, Kentucky is in the midst of a contentious fight over Amendment 2, which would amend the state’s constitution to allow for school choice. It quickly became clear that most of the choice advocacy blanketing the airwaves has been along the lines of “public schools stink, free markets rock!” We’ll see how the vote goes, but this seems like a lousy way to woo all those voters who’ve decided they like school choice but don’t like people bashing their local schools (and don’t give a hoot about market theory).

There are two other major school choice referenda on the ballot, in Colorado and Nebraska. Colorado’s, like Kentucky’s, would amend the state constitution to grant children a “right to school choice.” (Yeah, the language is really that vague.) In Nebraska, the measure would overturn the state’s brand-new voucher program. The polling is limited, so there’s a lot of uncertainty how this will go. If the choice camp wins in all three states, expect to see fired-up choice advocates in this winter’s legislative sessions and more initiatives like Colorado’s “right to choice” popping up. But if the anti-choice camp has a good night, in two red states and a charter school hotbed, it’ll prompt questions about the sustainability of the choice movement’s recent momentum. Any kind of mixed verdict will, of course, trigger a race to read the tea leaves based on what happens where and what the vote margins look like.

That got me thinking about an odd juxtaposition. Even amidst these heated statewide referenda (and a vitriolic presidential contest), the Cato Institute recently reported that the pace of our post-pandemic K–12 culture clashes seems to be slowing. Just last week, George Mason University’s David Houston reviewed the public opinion data and concluded Americans are ready for schools to refocus on the nuts and bolts of teaching and learning. What’s going on? The key here may be that the politics of schooling is far more concrete and tractable than a polarizing national election, meaning that a number of tensions are being discussed and addressed in ways that lower the temperature. (Ah, the blessings of local control and the ability to escape schools that offend.)

Meanwhile, a presidential contest inevitably invites rank punditry about who might be the next secretary of education. I won’t get into the betting odds (at least not today), but I will note that, if Trump wins, I’m especially intrigued by two potential options. One is Louisiana state chief Cade Brumley, a career educator who’s aggressively expanded CTE, required research-based reading instruction, expanded choice, and adopted first-rate social studies standards—all while working with a purple board and both Democratic and Republican governors. It’d be a welcome change to see a Republican SecEd who knows his way around education bureaucracies. The other is Rep. Virginia Foxx, the hard-charging chair of the House education committee who’ll be term-limited out of her post in January. After watching her take the lead on combating campus antisemitism, holding the Department of Education accountable for the FAFSA debacle, and shepherding bills like the Parents Bill of Rights and College Cost Reduction Act, it’d be fun to see what she could do at 400 Maryland Avenue.

If Harris claims the White House, we can probably expect some new faces at the Department of Ed. Harris’s team has indicated she wants her own people in place, and there’s a clear sense that many Democrats are eager to turn the page on what has been widely judged a disappointing performance on education. SecEd candidates include several governors and ex-governors, which we haven’t seen since the Clinton years. I’m curious whether someone like a Roy Cooper could bring political chops that might lessen the tensions around Title IX, loan forgiveness, and campus protests. That would also represent a significant departure from a Biden Department heavily staffed by alumni of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the teacher unions, and progressive advocacy.

So it looks like we can expect new leadership at the Department of Education no matter who wins, and not a moment too soon. Indeed, I was recently moved to pen a pretty scathing assessment of Miguel Cardona’s tenure as Secretary of Education. Some of my progressive friends stridently objected to my discussion of the illegal campaign to give away hundreds of billions in student loan “forgiveness,” arguing that Cardona had to act because Congress wouldn’t. Umm, about that. Recall that the Democrats had unified control of the federal government between 2021 and 2023 and approved trillions in new spending, but they chose not to devote a penny to loan forgiveness. Congress didn’t act because elected officials chose not to shift loan debt from borrowers to taxpayers. And that’s kind of the crucial point: when your party is warning that the nation faces a mortal threat to democratic norms, you really shouldn’t idly allow federal officials to normalize autocratic conduct.

Hey, and for anyone busy dreading the prospect of a Trump 2.0 or a Harris White House that reveals her recent pivot to the middle was a progressive Trojan horse, it’s worth noting the sage words of my AEI colleague Yuval Levin: Close presidential contests seem epic but tend to have lower stakes than we expect. Why? It’s because our system of government (with its separation of powers, checks and balances, and federal structure) is designed to restrain narrow majorities. As Yuval puts it, “A transformative election would require what neither party has managed in a long time: a decisive win signaling broad, durable public support.” That’s a bit of solace for those of us left cold by both coconut tree emojis and the stylings of dark MAGA.

Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “Old School with Rick Hess.”