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Penny Schwinn: Left Leaning Educrat Nominated For #2 In Department of Education
By Carole Hornsby Haynes March 1, 2025
As if the U.S. Department of Education (USDE) is not already swamped with leftist ideologues, another soon will likely be added to the very department that President Trump has vowed to dismantle and to remove woke ideologies from America's classrooms.
Penny Schwinn is Trump’s choice for the position of Deputy Secretary of Education to serve with Secretary-Designate Linda McMahon. Boasting about her ability to ignore cultural battles because they are “distracting,” she is anything but a cultural conservative. Her track record as an education leader is akin to a hurricane that touches land briefly and then moves on, leaving a wide swath of destruction behind.
Trump’s nomination has left me in a state of shock. For several years, I have been watching Schwinn’s actions, first in Texas, my adopted state, and then in Tennessee, my home and where members of my large family reside. It’s jokingly said that 40 percent of West Tennesseans belong to the Hornsby clan.
Schwinn’s career has had a meteoric rise. With her penchant for ignoring rules and creating chaos and additional costs to taxpayers, she has moved frequently from state to state, always in higher positions and now possibly becoming USDE Deputy Secretary as the prize plum.
First, a bit about Penny Schwinn’s background. Born into a family of educators, her career began in 2004 in Baltimore with Teach for America, a nonprofit organization created originally as a program to place bright recent college graduates in failing schools for two years with encouragement to pursue leadership roles in education. Being associated with Teach for America provided credibility and opened doors to state leadership positions.
British historian Robert Conquest once theorized that “Any organization not explicitly and constitutionally right-wing will sooner or later become left-wing.” That characterizes TFA today. Its noble mission has drifted from a focus on excellence in teaching and leadership toward progressive political goals, serving as a platform for radical identity politics. In 2016 the organization sent the Trump administration a list of demands that included “safe classrooms for LGBTQ youth and teachers,” “safe classrooms for Muslim students and teachers,” “culturally responsive teaching” and protection of the DACA program.
After leaving TFA, Schwinn founded a charter school in her hometown of Sacramento, California. She served briefly in leadership roles for Sacramento’s school district and then headed over to Delaware’s Department of Education from 2014-2016 as Chief of Accountability and Performance. The Delaware Leadership Project, which was funded partially by the Delaware Department of Education, hired her husband as director of leadership development.
In her first meeting with the Delaware State Board of Education, Schwinn managed to offend three non-white members. Her relationship with the community went downhill fast. Reckless and seemingly without a moral compass, Schwinn made poor decisions that turned the schools into chaos with parents, teachers, and advocates exploding in anger. Many believe her fiascos led to former Delaware Secretary of Education Mark Murphy being forced out of office.
Having “worn out her welcome” in Delaware, Schwinn fled to new pastures in Texas where she was hired in April 2016 by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) as Deputy Commissioner of Academics. In this position, she oversaw the agency's policies on testing and academic programs, including special education.
Soon after joining TEA, the “damn the rules, full speed ahead” Schwinn became embroiled in a no-bid contract that violated state law. The Texas Tribune reported that in 2017, “Schwinn spearheaded a no-bid contract with a Georgia-based company last year to mine data from thousands of students receiving special education services and to help create a long-term plan to help kids with disabilities.” When advocates blew up over the awarding of the $4.4 million contract, the TEA canceled the contract due to improprieties on the agency’s part. in protecting personally identifiale inform. The December cancellation meant forfeiture of $2.2 million that had already been paid to SPEDx.
A state audit found that the TEA had “failed to follow all the required steps before offering a no-bid $4.4 million contract” and that Schwinn had somehow forgotten to disclose her professional development training from the person who became the subcontractor on the special education contract.
But that was not the end of the Schwinn SPEDx fiasco. The Houston Chronicle reported, “The U.S. Department of Education has asked Texas to repay more than $2.5 million after state auditors found the agency violated purchasing rules when it awarded a multimillion-dollar no-bid contract to a group tasked with collecting data about special education students.” That Schwinn debacle – $2.2 million plus $2.5 million – cost Texas taxpayers $4.7 million.
While at TEA, Schwinn worked with radical pro-abortion groups and transgender educators for the development of sexual health education standards. The standards committee included Advocates for Youth, a radical pro-abortion and transgender organization that employs comprehensive sex-ed to indoctrinate students and establish school-based health centers. The commmittee also included a leader from Momentous Institute, a private Dallas school that was using transgender teaching tools, such as the Genderbread Person and the Gender Unicorn.
In 2018 Schwinn was in one of the first cohorts of Chiefs for Change that proudly states, "Diversity, equity, and inclusion are core to the Future Chiefs program." The organization is a member of the communist UNESCO’s Global Education Coalition.
Less than two years after joining the TEA and faced with ongoing fights with angry parents over the sexual health education standards, Schwinn decided it was time to move on – this time to Massachusetts. That position did not materialize but one in Tennessee did. Despite his familiarity with the Texas state audit, the less-than-conservative Republican Governor Bill Lee appointed Schwinn in 2019 as the state’s education commissioner – the top public education position in the state.
There she helped Lee revise the education funding formula to allow funding to follow the child in school choice programs and spearheaded new initiatives, including a comprehensive plan to improve literacy and a federal apprentice program to train teachers. Her tenure was marked by controversy, with high turnover in the education department and a no-bid contract to a company charged with managing the state’s incoming pilot voucher program. State lawmakers frequently complained that she launched new initiatives without appropriate legislative input, review, or approval.
Immediately after Lee appointed Schwinn, he began the push for an Education Savings Account (ESA) program – a type of voucher. Circumventing legal battles that delayed funding, Schwinn approved a no-bid contract with Florida-based ClassWallet and used Career Ladder funds for teacher salaries to implement the ESA. Tennessee lawmakers were livid; the legislature had budgeted only $771,300 for that year’s voucher program. The $2.5 million ClassWallet contract covered two years of managing online accounts and applications and options for extensions for three years – for a total of $6.3 million.
But Lee got his Education Savings Program – no wonder he makes such glowing remarks about her.
Schwinn unveiled her plan in August 2020 to use $1 million in federal funds to conduct a child “well-being checks” with monthly home visits for children from birth to age 18. Within days following the public furor, Schwinn walked back her plan and apologized to state lawmakers who were having to deal with outraged families.
Schwinn faced a potential “no confidence” vote from legislators and some called for her resignation. The vote never was taken.
Ignoring once again a conflict of interest, in 2021 Schwinn signed an $8 million contract with TNTP Inc, a New York-based company as part of Tennessee’s reading initiative, for whom her husband worked.
Schwinn ran afoul of parents groups, including Moms for Liberty Tennessee and Parents Choice Tennessee, when she issued waivers to schools which allowed them to teach Wit and Wisdom in violation of a Tennesse ban on the teaching of Critical Race Theory. Wit & Wisdom is an age inappropriate K-8 English language arts curriculum that incorporates Transformative Social and Emotional Learning, Critical Race Theory, segregation, gender fluidity, racism, violence, brutality, slavery, graphic death, suicide, cannibalism, fear anti-Christian and anti-American sentiment, gore and pornographic images.
In 2023 Schwinn announced her resignation as Tennessee Education Commissioner while acknowledging that culture war battles over race and gender had gotten in the way of her agenda. She served briefly as vice president of the University of Florida under former Republican U.S. Senator and University President, Ben Sasse. She was not re-appointed after Sasse resigned.
Since Trump’s nomination, Schwinn has been endorsed by prominent Republicans inclueding former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, and Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Schwinn is listed as a speaker with the Heritage Foundation.
Conservatives are not happy with her nomination. Social media is flooded with criticism of Schwinn by notable conservatives, including Dr. Carol Swain, Tennessee musician John Rich, Michael Patrick Leahy, and Robby Starbuck.
On social media many conservatives are expressing bewilderment by the endorsement of conservative investigative journalist and senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute, Christopher Rufo, who has reported extensively on DEI and Critical Race Theory. Even though the state issued a press release announcing “monthly child well-being calls,” Schwinn told Rufo she never endorsed the plan, according to his tweet, and he indicated that he believed her.
Rufo is a highly respected journalist who easily can check the facts about Schwinn’s record in Tennessee. Is covering for Schwinn a mandate from Manhattan? What does he stand to lose?
In her defense Rufo posted, “During our meeting, she personally committed to me that she will work to (a) shut down the terrible programs at the Department of Education; (b) fight critical race theory, gender cultism, and DEI in America’s schools; and (c) support new initiatives on school choice and classical education. President Trump and Secretary McMahon selected Penny for a reason, and we should all work together to make sure she is successful. I’m optimistic that she will listen to parents and make progress that is desperately needed. I’ll be supporting her for Deputy Secretary of Education, and hope you will, too.”
In response, John Rich posted, “Chris, I personally met with Schwinn and Lee in their office and showed them images from some of these books, and read the language. I also showed them the links that were offered at public schools that allowed kids to be linked to adult sites. Schwinn acted as if she had no idea about any of it, then promised me all of it would be handled. It wasn't.”
Schwinn has a long history of ignoring parents and cultural issues. Why should anyone believe she now will listen to parents and carry out Trump’s mission to eradiate DEI, Critical Race Theory, and DEI in American schools along with dismantling the USDE?
Schwinn has a history of deception and ignoring the rules to accommodate her agenda. As #2 at the USDE, she could do real damage. Already DEI is being rebranded by universities to allow them to continue their evil discrimination. The same can be done at the K-12 level through deceptive directives from Schwinn who does not allow parents and cultural battles to distract her from her mission.
Schwinn’s worldview is clearly antithetical to America First. Who is behind this? Is she a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” to stop the dismantling of the USDE? The facts are clear: Schwinn is a proponent of Critical Race Theory and DEI which President Trump has vowed to end. She is not going to change.