My favorite candidate for Edu Sec when PrezO was selecting was, and still is, was among the prominent Obama campaign advisers on education Stanford University professor Linda Darling-Hammond.
She is the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, where she launched the School Redesign Network, the Stanford Educational Leadership Institute, and the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education. Darling-Hammond is author or editor of more than a dozen books and more than 300 articles on education policy and practice. Her work focuses on school restructuring, teacher education, and educational equity. She was education advisor to Barack Obama's presidential campaign [1][2] and was reportedly among candidates for United States Secretary of Education in the Obama administration.[3] She was awarded the 2012 Grawemeyer Award for Education from the University of Louisville.[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Darling-Hammond