Former Tennessee education commissioner Penny Schwinn is Donald Trump’s choice for Deputy Secretary of Education, but critics have raised concerns over her past support for ‘diversity’ in teacher hiring and COVID ‘wellbeing checks’ into private homes that happened under her watch.
UPDATE, January 21, 2025, 2:12PM CST: This report has been updated with comments by Christopher Rufo, relaying Penny Schwinn's responses to critics.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) -- Conservatives are sounding the alarm about Penny Schwinn, President Donald Trump’s choice for Deputy Secretary of Education, hoping to change his mind over what they call her support for many of the very “woke” policies the newly-returned president spent his first day in office reversing, a characterization disputed by defenders.
“Penny has a strong record of delivering results for children and families,” Trump said of the former Tennessee education commissioner in his Truth Social announcement. “A former teacher herself, Penny became the founding principal of a charter school, because she believes in the power of School Choice, and is committed to delivering the American Dream to the next Generation by returning Education BACK TO THE STATES.”
Education Week praised Schwinn for having “extensive experience in K-12 education,” noting she is a “strong supporter of school choice.” In 2021, she said she was committed to enforcing state law prohibiting ideological indoctrination in the classroom, writing that "recent legislation tasked TDOE with building a framework to prevent propaganda like critical race theory from being taught in Tennessee classrooms [...] We acknowledge the challenges that exist in balancing the state’s current process for curricula approval but are committed to enforcing the CRT law as the legislature designed it."
However, several conservative activists, including individuals who have been largely favorable toward Trump, have spoken out to urge him to withdraw Schwinn’s nomination, citing her past declaration of “equity” as her core value and support for race-based hiring to “diversify” the teacher pool, and more.
Of particular concern was Schwinn’s role in “wellbeing check” empowering the state to go into homes to check on children during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns.
As LifeSiteNews reported at the time, Tennessee’s COVID-19 Child Wellbeing Task Force was tasked with “ensur[ing] the needs of children are being met during and after extended periods of time away from school due to the coronavirus pandemic.” The checks were to apply to “ALL” children in the state, and while they were officially not supposed to be coerced, documents indicated that failure to complete a simple online survey could easily be escalated to a home visit.
The Tennessee Department of Education eventually withdrew its plan after an uproar from residents and local legislators. One legislator insisted that the Department of Education is “correcting the mistake.” Schwinn said at the time, “to be perfectly honest, the language was something that we all missed. We’ve updated the language for its actual intent, but there is … no big brother.”
On Tuesday, the Manhattan Institute's Christopher Rufo, a prominent activist against left-wing indoctrination in education, posted that he had the opportunity to meet personally with Schwinn and relay critics' concerns.
"First, Penny did not allow 'porn in schools' while she was education commissioner in Tennessee. The opposite is true," he wrote. "Under her tenure, Tennessee strengthened restrictions on explicit materials and Penny worked hard to enforce the law, threatening non-compliant schools with up to $5 million dollars in fines and license revocation for teachers who pushed porn in the classroom. In addition, she implemented a policy that all teachers must publish the full classroom book list and make it available to parents. These are some of the best policies of any state.
"Second, Penny did not endorse government 'wellbeing checks' during COVID," Rufo continued. "During the pandemic, one of her staff members wrote a line in a PDF that mentioned 'wellbeing checks,' but Penny immediately retracted this language and issued a statement making clear that she opposed any such policy. Penny worked hard to make sure that Tennessee was one of the first states to reopen schools in August 2020. There were zero 'wellbeing checks' under her tenure and, as the mother of two adopted kids, she understands the danger of government intrusion into the home."Still, concerns remain as to just how she would help shape Trump’s Department of Education, which he said on the campaign trail he wants to close down. Conservatives have been largely pleased with many of his appointees and most of his day-one executive actions, but many argue vigilance will be required to push back on reversals from the more conservative platform of his first term on issues such as abortion.
