New Education Secretary Linda McMahon: ‘Send Education to the States’

by Jeff Johnston | March 11, 2025 | Education

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon recently sent her staff a letter titled, “Our Department’s Final Mission.” She wrote, “My vision is aligned with the President’s: to send education back to the states.”

Secretary McMahon added, “The Department of Education’s role in this new era of accountability is to restore the rightful role of state oversight in education and to end the overreach from Washington.”

Other goals listed in the staff letter include:

  • “Empower all parents to choose an excellent education for their children through increased school choice” by “promoting school choice for every child.” 
  • Combat radical ideologies and practices, such as “critical race theory, DEI, gender ideology and discrimination in admissions.” 
  • Eliminate “waste, red tape and harmful programs in the federal government.”
  • Restore “patriotic education and civics.” 

President Trump has already taken steps to achieve some of these goals, signing executive orders directing the DOE to promote educational freedom for families; stop the indoctrination of children into “radical, anti-American ideologies”; protect girls and women’s sports; and end diversity, equity and inclusivity (DEI) programs in education.

The department’s Office of Civil Rights launched investigations into schools and districts for Title IX violations.  Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor then sent a “Dear Colleague” letter, warning states and schools that they must eliminate discriminatory DEI trainings and curriculums and end racial preferences in hiring and admissions – or lose federal education funds.

Shortly after his election, the president said, “One other thing I’ll be doing very early in the administration is closing up the Department of Education in Washington, D.C. and sending all education and education work back to the states.”

Since Congress established the DOE in 1979, it’s unlikely that this administration can unilaterally and legally shut down the department without congressional approval.

But conservative activist Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute,  argues there are things Secretary McMahon can do to reduce the size and impact of the government agency. In an article in City Journal, he writes:

The administration must first understand that the Department of Education administers three primary activities: college student loans and grants; K-12 funding; and ideological production, which includes an array of programs, grants, civil rights initiatives, and third-party NGOs that create left-wing content to push on local schools.

He suggests McMahon handle each of these areas separately:

  • First, the department should spin off all college student loans and grants to an independent financial entity.
  • Second, the administration, in cooperation with Congress, should block-grant the Department of Education’s K-12 funding programs to the states. 
  • Third, Trump must shut down the Department of Education’s centers of ideological production and terminate the employment of the bureaucrats who run them.

Rufo explains this last point, saying:

The department maintains a sprawling network of ideological centers through its research programs, as well as a vast array of NGOs, which survive on department funding and promote left-wing identity activism. These groups have become hotbeds of progressive identity politics, promoting theories of “systemic racism” and the idea that men can turn into women.

The conservative author has posted examples on X demonstrating DOE support for radical ideology. For example, this NGO, given funds by the agency, tells educators they should “learn to further avoid stigmatizing youth engaged in survival sex work.”

The presentation goes on to describe “adultism”: “The oppression experienced by children and young people at the hand of adults and adult-produced/adult-tailored systems.”

Rufo spotlighted another training program, funded by the DOE, “which claims that babies develop racial biases as infants and begin ‘attributing negative traits to non-dominant (non-white) races’ by age 5.”

Your tax dollars at work.

Secretary McMahon wrote in her letter to DOE employees about the waste and misuse of funds, with little positive impact on academic achievement:

The Department of Education is not working as intended. Since its establishment in 1980, taxpayers have entrusted the department with over $1 trillion, yet student outcomes have consistently languished. Millions of young Americans are trapped in failing schools, subjected to radical anti-American ideology, or saddled with college debt for a degree that has not provided a meaningful return on their investment.

McMahon reminded the staff, “Parents are the primary decision makers in their children’s education.” She encouraged them to work to “empower parents to make the best educational choices for their children” as the administration seeks to transfer educational authority back to the states.

Related Articles and Resources

Focus on the Family’s free parenting resource Equipping Parents for Back to School explains issues like educational freedom, parental rights in education, critical race theory, sexual education, and religious freedom and free speech in schools. It’s a terrific resource for parents who want to advocate for their children and guide them toward academic success.

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