McMahon is committed to fulfilling the president’s campaign promise—shutting down the department and putting herself out of a job.
Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
To Education Secretary Linda McMahon, outsourcing education-related grant programs to other federal departments is just a “proof of concept” for her larger goal—closing the 45-year-old agency.
“Let’s move programs out on a temporary basis. Let’s see how the work is done. What is the result? What is the outcome?” she said in an all-staff meeting at the department Tuesday, shortly after publicly announcing six interagency agreements. “And if it has worked and we have proven that this is the best way to do it, then we’ll ask Congress to codify this and make it a permanent move.” (The meeting was closed to the public. All quotes are pulled from a recording obtained by Inside Higher Ed.)
In 20 minutes, the secretary explained her plan and the framework through which she hopes her employees and the nation will view it.
“We are not talking about shutting down the Department of Education. We are talking about returning education to states where it belongs,” she said. “That is the right messaging.”
McMahon cited polling that she said showed that while the public doesn’t support shutting down ED, respondents are more supportive when they hear the plan still preserves ED’s programs by sending them to other agencies.
A restructuring like the one in Tuesday’s announcement has been rumored for months, and the changes mirror recommendations outlined in Project 2025—a conservative blueprint that called for closing ED. (The education section of Project 2025 was spearheaded by Lindsey Burke, who is now the department’s deputy chief of staff for policy and programs.)
To advance President Trump’s goal of shuttering the agency, McMahon has previously shipped career and technical education programs to the Department of Labor and laid off nearly half of her staff.
But while the secretary said she understands the “unrest” and “uncertainty” the reductions in force have caused and stressed that they were hard decisions made with the “greatest of thought and care,” she stood firm on her belief that they were necessary.
“I applaud and appreciate everything that every one of you in this room is doing and has done over the years,” she said. “I’m not saying to any one of you that your efforts aren’t good enough—what I’m saying is the policies behind those efforts have not been good enough.”
McMahon then argued that the first agreement reached earlier this year with Labor has paid off.
By co-managing, “we can be more efficient and economical,” she said. “For instance, we’ve utilized Labor’s system now on grant drawdowns, and we’ve drawn down over 500 already, and they work very proficiently. It’s a better system than we had here.”
Although some conservatives praised the administration’s actions, others cast doubt on their magnitude or argued they were distracting attention from what really matters. For Margaret Spellings, former education secretary under President George W. Bush, that’s the “economic emergency” of improving student outcomes.
“Moving programs from one department to another does not actually eliminate the federal bureaucracy, and it may make the system harder for students, teachers and families to navigate and get the support they need,” she said. “We need to keep the main thing the main thing, and that is how to improve education and outcomes for all students.”
McMahon, on the other hand, told employees that this move is key to doing just that.
“We want to make sure that [students] understand there are many opportunities for them … that there are programs that will give them a great livelihood, whether they want to be electricians or doctors or Indian chiefs,” she said. “We are not closing education; we are lifting education up.”
