Charting a Course for American Education

It turns out that you can be honest and modest and succeed in Washington—just don't stay too long.

An apolitical academic, an unknown, is appointed to the White House to advise the administration on STEM education, a topic absent of interest by the president. Until that is, fans begin to accumulate, and momentum builds. A hire of disinterested necessity—merely an act of compliance with Congress—becomes a pivotal character triangulated between a workforce-focused West Wing, federal agencies fiercely guarding their independence, and a national groundswell—indeed an emerging movement—desperate for a North Star.

This modern-day Gulliver's Travels in Bureaucracyland begins benignly enough. America's education systems must respond to the needs of industry, and thus the economy, and produce more scientists, technologists, engineers, mathematicians, and related professionals Congress declared in 2010. The White House's science and technology policy office was assigned to write a strategic plan and update it every five years. The first came out in 2013, due to expire in 2018. The Trump administration was on the hook, but as of 2017, it was on no one's radar.

Under pressure and getting heat from Capitol Hill, the administration rolodexed who's whom in STEM and recruited a state servant for the federal chore. Short on time, oblivious to political polarity, unbound to beltway traditions, and unfazed by saboteurs, the Midwesterner blazed new trails for how D.C. can work in setting education policy.