President Trump’s choice to lead the Education Department said Thursday she backs a plan to “return education to the states” without cutting essential federal funding for schools.
Linda McMahon, the former professional wrestling executive who headed the Small Business Administration during Mr. Trump’s first term, told a Senate panel weighing her nomination that if confirmed she wouldn’t shut down the Education Department without congressional approval, but plans to reorganize it.
Ms. McMahon told lawmakers on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that she would reshuffle the department, sending some functions to the states or to other government agencies in a bid to improve “a system in decline.”
The changes could send the department’s Office for Civil Rights to the Justice Department, Ms. McMahon said, while the department overseeing programs for students with learning disabilities could be moved back to the Health and Human Services Department, where it was created decades ago.
The Education Department needs a shake-up, she said.
“The bottom line is because it’s not working. The Department of Education was set up in 1980 and since that time, we have spent almost a trillion dollars, and we have watched our performance scores continue to go down,” she told senators.
Mr. Trump has pledged to shutter the department, telling reporters this week he’d like to do so “immediately.” He pointed to low reading and math scores for U.S. students despite high per-pupil spending.
Per-pupil spending on U.S. students has climbed 56% over the past decade, while 4th-grade reading scores fell more than 5% and 8th-gradee math dropped more than 10%.
U.S. students last year ranked 28th in math among students from 37 developed nations and 12th in science, Pew Research reported.
Schools are largely funded by state and local governments, but billions of dollars in aid and grants are funneled through the Education Department.
The department’s $68 billion budget covers a massive student loan and student aid program, in addition to K-12 initiatives that include data collection and oversight of federal statutes such as Title IX. The department employs 4,400 people.
Ms. McMahon said she’d advocate for school choice — a policy that lets parents use federal funding to attend nonpublic schools or federally funded but independently run charter schools.
“Fund education freedom, not government. Run systems. Listen to parents, not politicians. Build up careers, not college debt. Empower states, not special interests. Invest in teachers, not Washington bureaucrats,” Ms. McMahon said. “If confirmed as secretary, I will work with Congress to reorient the department toward helping educators, not controlling them.”
Protesters interrupted Ms. McMahon several times, among them teachers chanting in opposition to defunding the department and against charter schools and vouchers.
Ms. McMahon appears on track to win confirmation by the GOP-led Senate but is unlikely to earn any votes from Democrats, who want to keep the Education Department intact and oppose the president’s directive to rid schools of diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Sen. Chris Murphy, Connecticut Democrat, called Ms. McMahon’s refusal to reject Mr. Trump’s executive order on DEI “chilling,” and said it would leave public schools questioning whether they can teach African American history or other classes about minority or ethnic groups at the risk of losing federal funding. Ms. McMahon said she would examine the school programs before determining if they violate the president’s order.
“I think you’re gonna have a lot of educators and a lot of principals and administrators scrambling right now,” Mr. Murphy said.
Ms. McMahon called school DEI initiatives “tough,” and said they are not achieving the desired goal.
“I think what we’re seeing is that it’s having an opposite effect. We are getting back to more segregating of our schools instead of having more inclusion in our schools,” she said.
“When there are DEI programs that say that Black students need separate graduation ceremonies or Hispanics need separate ceremonies, we are not achieving what we wanted to achieve with inclusion,” she said.
Ms. McMahon said she backs Mr. Trump’s campaign pledges to keep biological males out of girls’ and women’s sports, and told Sen. Roger Marshall, Kansas Republican, she would consider forming a commission to study the rise in antisemitism on college campuses, where pro-Hamas groups have demonstrated and threatened Jewish students.
She also told lawmakers that, if confirmed, her primary goal will be reforming the Education Department so that student learning and performance improves, in part by extricating the federal government from the classroom.
“We have failed in our mission. We are not delivering the kind of education that we need to deliver to our children,” Ms. McMahon said. “I believe, as does the president, that the best education is closest to the child, and that parents and school officials who understand the needs of those children in those communities can best direct the education in those states.”
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
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