By Issues & Insights Editorial Board | February 14, 2025
Americans who care deeply about education were treated to a rare sight on Thursday. In her testimony before Congress to be the head of the Department of Education, Linda McMahon openly and proudly outlined a plan to not just get rid of her job, but take the federal government out of the education business. We wish her luck.
In January, before Trump first bruited his idea to close the Education Department, I&I archly suggested that “The most successful secretary of Education will be the one who shuts it down.” Little did we know that President Donald Trump would propose just that, and let his pick to lead the department make the case for doing so to Congress.
“I’d like it to be closed immediately,” Trump said on Wednesday. “The Department of Education’s a big con job.”
He’s right. McMahon, that ultra-rare unusual appointee whose greatest desire is to close her department and put herself out of a job, outlined a day later why and how she’d do that.
While Trump’s criticism sounds harsh, in fact, even under his plan many pieces of the current Education Department would remain in place — but within other parts of government. The Ed Department has failed in its mission and needs to be dismantled, though that will require lawmakers’ approval.
“I will work with Congress to reorient the department to helping educators, not controlling them,” McMahon said, adding: “Defunding is not the goal here.” Defund, no; dismantle, yes.
McMahon noted in her questioning that, for instance, aid for disabled students would likely be better handled by the Department of Health and Human Services, rather than the Education Department. And she vowed more than once that Congress’ federal aid to low-income school districts and students would be maintained.
So does the department really need to be dismantled? You bet. And McMahon, former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment but also former head of the Small Business Administration in Trump’s previous four years in office, is just the woman to do the job.
The recent experience with COVID underscores why education is too important to be left to Big Government. Under President Joe Biden, the Ed Department presided over teacher-union-friendly school shutdowns and shoddy “remote learning” programs that caused literally millions of American school kids’ of every race and ethnicity to lose ground against previous generations.
Many if not most of them will pay for this with shrunken incomes and fewer choices over their lifetimes. It’s an epic disgrace.
This was from a report from just two years ago: “The COVID-19 pandemic spared no state or region as it caused historic learning setbacks for America’s children, erasing decades of academic progress and widening racial disparities, according to results of a national test that provide the sharpest look yet at the scale of the crisis.”
But surely, you say, things are better now. After all, COVID’s over, so test scores must have recovered, especially after additional spending of $190 billion during COVID.
If you thought things would be better, you were dead wrong. The shock report two weeks ago that showed test scores plunging from five years ago was alarming to say the least.
As we wrote then:
(T)est scores remain abysmal, with no improvement. Average reading scores for 8th graders (America’s future workforce, mind you) have fallen from 263 in 2019 to 258 in 2024, erasing 33 years of slow improvement in reading. Math is just as bad, if not worse. True, the 274 level is the same as in 2022, but it’s way below the level five years ago.
So, no, nothing has improved. Instead, it was revealed to what extent the Department of Education had become a money-launderer for powerful teachers unions and their allies in major Democrat-run cities’ school districts. Trump is right; it’s a massive scam.
If you want proof, just look at the nation’s capital. There, spending per pupil was $27,425 in 2022, second only to the state of New York’s $29,873, according to the Census Bureau.
So how did the District do with all that extra cash? The recent National Assessment of Educational Progress scores was summed up recently by the Dallas Express:
Despite the high level of spending compared to other districts, 48 jurisdictions scored significantly higher on the 2022 NAEP assessment for fourth grade math, and 49 scored higher than D.C. on the eighth grade assessment.
For reading, D.C. was significantly behind 42 other jurisdictions in fourth grade reading. In eighth grade, it was behind 44 other states and districts, which includes districts like the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA).
The Education Department has little to do with educating, and a lot to do with mollifying the teachers unions, some of the biggest political donors in the nation. Indeed, as we noted recently, President Jimmy Carter created the Education Department expressly at the behest of the nation’s largest teachers union, the National Education Association (NEA).
Ever since then, the Ed Department has been beholden to teachers unions, particularly during Democratic administrations (in the 2024 political cycle, education unions gave 98.4% of all their contributions to Democrats). For instance, under Biden, schools received an added $190 billion during COVID, an unparalleled influx of money.
But it did nothing to improve student scores. In fact, scores fell.
Nothing new there. Since the Education Department was formed in 1979, things have pretty much been the same. A lot of taxpayer spending, no big changes, and few if any results. An exercise in bureaucratic waste and futility. Kill it off, and use its demise as a model for other useless bureaucracies.
Yep. Trump is right. It’s time to dismantle the Education Department, which has failed us for 46 years. In its place, we need innovation: school vouchers, school choice, professional trade education for the non-college bound, and a renewed emphasis on teaching basic skills such as reading, writing, and math.
Before we can get those things, however, we need to decentralize education. That means taking control of education away from Washington, D.C., and handing power back to parents, teachers, and locally elected school boards – where it belongs.
Issues & Insights was founded by seasoned journalists of the IBD Editorials page. Our mission is to provide timely, fact-based reporting and deeply informed analysis on the news of the day – without fear or favor.
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