\n<\/p>\n
McMahon is committed to fulfilling the president\u2019s campaign promise\u2014shutting down the department and putting herself out of a job.<\/p>\n
Jim Watson\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
To Education Secretary Linda McMahon, outsourcing education-related grant programs to other federal departments is just a \u201cproof of concept\u201d for her larger goal\u2014closing the 45-year-old agency.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s move programs out on a temporary basis. Let\u2019s see how the work is done. What is the result? What is the outcome?\u201d she said in an all-staff meeting at the department Tuesday, shortly after publicly announcing six interagency agreements. \u201cAnd if it has worked and we have proven that this is the best way to do it, then we\u2019ll ask Congress to codify this and make it a permanent move.\u201d (The meeting was closed to the public. All quotes are pulled from a recording obtained by Inside Higher Ed<\/em>.) <\/p>\n In 20 minutes, the secretary explained her plan and the framework through which she hopes her employees and the nation will view it.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are not talking about shutting down the Department of Education. We are talking about returning education to states where it belongs,\u201d she said. \u201cThat is the right messaging.\u201d<\/p>\n McMahon cited polling that she said showed that while the public doesn\u2019t support shutting down ED, respondents are more supportive when they hear the plan still preserves ED\u2019s programs by sending them to other agencies.<\/p>\n A restructuring like the one in Tuesday\u2019s announcement has been rumored for months, and the changes mirror recommendations outlined in Project 2025\u2014a conservative blueprint that called for closing ED. (The education section of Project 2025 was spearheaded by Lindsey Burke, who is now the department\u2019s deputy chief of staff for policy and programs.) <\/p>\n To advance President Trump\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n But while the secretary said she understands the \u201cunrest\u201d and \u201cuncertainty\u201d the reductions in force have caused and stressed that they were hard decisions made with the \u201cgreatest of thought and care,\u201d she stood firm on her belief that they were necessary.<\/p>\n \u201cI applaud and appreciate everything that every one of you in this room is doing and has done over the years,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m not saying to any one of you that your efforts aren\u2019t good enough\u2014what I\u2019m saying is the policies behind those efforts have not been good enough.\u201d<\/p>\n McMahon then argued that the first agreement reached earlier this year with Labor has paid off.<\/p>\n By co-managing, \u201cwe can be more efficient and economical,\u201d she said. \u201cFor instance, we\u2019ve utilized Labor\u2019s system now on grant drawdowns, and we\u2019ve drawn down over 500 already, and they work very proficiently. It\u2019s a better system than we had here.\u201d <\/p>\n Although some conservatives praised the administration\u2019s 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\u2019s the \u201ceconomic emergency\u201d of improving student outcomes.<\/p>\n \u201cMoving 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,\u201d she said. \u201cWe need to keep the main thing the main thing, and that is how to improve education and outcomes for all students.\u201d<\/p>\n McMahon, on the other hand, told employees that this move is key to doing just that. <\/p>\n \u201cWe want to make sure that [students] understand there are many opportunities for them\u00a0\u2026 that there are programs that will give them a great livelihood, whether they want to be electricians or doctors or Indian chiefs,\u201d she said. \u201cWe are not closing education; we are lifting education up.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" McMahon is committed to fulfilling the president\u2019s campaign promise\u2014shutting 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 \u201cproof of concept\u201d for her larger goal\u2014closing the 45-year-old agency. \u201cLet\u2019s move programs out on a temporary<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34516,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[19603,5810,6098],"class_list":{"0":"post-34515","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-agreements","9":"tag-mcmahon","10":"tag-temporary"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/34516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}