Yacht’s all, folks.

— Emily Richmond (@EWAEmily) January 8, 2021

People email, ‘what will you write in a reax piece?’ What is there to say?

Betsy DeVos’ resignation is too little too late given this administration. At the same time it’s also better than doing nothing at this moment and seems like the right thing to do. Everyone saying DeVos should have stuck around to invoke the 25th Amendment seems not to understand either how that works or the political appetite for it among Republicans right now (in the interest of transparency, I’m not a Republican but am in favor of it being invoked, the President is clearly unable to discharge his duties faithfully at this point. You don’t want to turn the cabinet into a political board of directors but this is an extraordinary situation. Absent that I hope he is impeached and removed).

It was not a successful tenure, from the get-go. Some people would never give her a chance on anything, but she made it too easy for them.

She oversaw a lot of policy changes – some that will impact the sector for some time and many that in my view are not good policy. Though questions about the scope of appropriate jurisdiction remain she’ll get some credit for the Title IX due process changes – which is a classic ‘‘of course there’s a back channel‘ issue in terms of the public and private views of many institutions and individuals.

There was an opportunity to put the field’s focus on kids rather than adults, which is sorely needed. Yet she was too ineffective to pull it off and instead turbocharged education’s adult oriented politics. She was staunchly in favor of school choice but arguably set back the cause of giving low-income families more educational power.

Miguel Cardona has a tough job ahead of him, but an easy act to follow.