Even for
veteran education watchers, however, this is difficult, not only because the Trump administration's budget and policy proposals are more skeletal than those put forward by previous administrations, but because the Department of Education does not directly oversee the nation's 100,000 public schools.
This has been brilliantly and devastatingly explicated by cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham, as well as by organizations such as Common Core, education thinkers like E.D. Hirsch and Diane Ravitch, and
veteran education watchers such as Jay Mathews.