Trump Nominates Linda McMahon for Education Secretary
McMahon served as the administrator of the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first administration.
President-elect Donald Trump nominated Linda McMahon for Secretary of Education.
McMahon co-founded World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) in 1980 with her husband Vince.
McMahon served as the administrator of the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first administration.
“For the past four years, as the Chair of the Board at the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), Linda has been a fierce advocate for Parents’ Rights, working hard at both AFPI and America First Works (AFW) to achieve Universal School Choice in 12 States, giving children the opportunity to receive an excellent Education, regardless of zip code or income,” Trump said. “As Secretary of Education, Linda will fight tirelessly to expand ‘Choice’ to every State in America, and empower parents to make the best Education decisions for their families.”
I have a better idea. End the Education Department. Just completely end it.
McMahon has a background in education. Trump wrote:
Linda served for two years on the Connecticut Board of Education, where she was one of fifteen members overseeing all Public Education in the State, including its Technical High School system. She also served as a Member of the Board of Trustees at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, for two stints totaling over 16 years. She is now doing an incredible job as Co-Chair of our Trump-Vance Transition Team. Linda will use her decades of Leadership experience, and deep understanding of both Education and Business, to empower the next Generation of American Students and Workers, and make America Number One in Education in the World. We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort.
McMahon stepped down as SBA administrator in 2019 to chair America First Action, a pro-Trump super PAC.
She is also the board chair of America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank. McMahon formed the think tank with Larry Kudlow and other Trump advisors.
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Ok, but I was hoping for Chris Rufo.
So was I but she is solid. Hopefully she will only be around long enough to see what the best way to shut it down is.
And, I was hoping for Cleveland Demolition.
I’d make a small wager Rufo will wind up as an undersecretary / deputy secretary in DoEd.
Think of his position as the Royal High Inquisitor, with a mandate to search out DEI programs that continue after the “Dear Colleague” letter that MacMahon will issue on Day 1. (See the articles by Prof. Jacobson, Steven Hayward, and others about that— letter will likely inform schools that the department now considers any program (admissions, hiring, tenure, promotion, funding, etc.) that discriminates for or against anyone based on race, sex, etc., to be illegal discrimination that renders the school ineligible to receive federal funds.)
We all know that in response to such a directive, the wokesters will simply continue their DEI activities sub rosa. Rufo would make the perfect guy to suss out such activities, and the make a VERY public example of a high profile violator (e.g., go after a Yale or a Berkeley, cut off their federal funds, and seek the indictment / prosecution of the signatory of the school’s post “Dear Colleague” letter nondiscrimination certification for perjury and wire fraud).
If Rufo conducted a very public auto-da-fe of one high profile school like this, the rest will fall into line. Indeed, the fear of this modern Torquemada would likely do a lot of the work for him.
I was hoping no announcement meant Trump was looking to get rid of the Dept of Education at the beginning of the administration’s new term.
Oh well. Let’s hope Linda McMahon starts that process.
To close it down, he has to take over its operations. I’ll bet she is going to do that.
Sec of Ed can shutter a lot of things, but actually closing DoEd will take Congressional action.
Until that happens, use the power of that department to crush DEI and roast a lot of academia over a slow fire.
They declared war on us years ago. Let’s see how they like it when we return fire.
Yes! School
Choice
In Texas of all
Places the RINOs have kept us from getting it
Abbott is making a lot of noise about getting it done in the next session. Fingers crossed.
School choice in Texas is a lock next session. Most of the RINO’s who opposed it were successfully primaried (or chose not to run for re-election), and the GOP increased its supermajorities in both houses.
House Speaker (and Chief RINO) Dade Phelan came within a whisker of losing his seat. The old Straus-Bonnen-Phelan RINO machine has now been completely gutted, and it’s unlikely he’ll be the Speaker this time around.
Even those RINO’s who survived now understand that continuing to oppose school choice and otherwise allying with the Dems will guarantee a well-funded primary challenger. Most of them will go along with school choice rather than face a constant battle to stay in office.
While there is truth in your post in fairness it is more complicated than that. In many rural counties all over the USA, not just TX, the public schools still function and they don’t have the nonsense the large metropolitan districts have. Then there’s the economic and social component. Many of the local power structure are married to teachers. Not at all uncommon for the Attorneys, CPAs, Physicians, Bankers, small business owners, farmers and ranchers to have a teacher as a spouse. In these rural counties they don’t see the point in risking the system they have b/c it still works as intended. Sort of a bird in the hand v two in the bush mindset.
The bigger problem is that the public school coffers are largely unwatched. Rural schools are not immune to the problems of larger districts and it’s usually much harder to deal with a system ran by your close neighbors than strangers. The nepotism is more endemic, the “untouchables” more outrageous, and parents with struggling children are often trapped in the no-win situation of calling out a community member for incompetence or misconduct. Parents feel even more trapped by a failing school because of the social embarrassment of speaking out or going elsewhere. Today’s tech is giving Texas students lots more choices and parents are taking them. Now, it’s time to take the financial blackmail away from the schools and give it back to the taxpayer.
To be clear I am 100% for true school choice which IMO means handing over 80%+ of the per pupil funding to the educational program chosen by the Parents as the best fit for their child.
I also agree with you about the potential to be ostracized for making waves in a small town school district and the nepotism. Obviously I can’t speak to every district but I haven’t seen any tranny nonsense or DEI/CRT nonsense in my rural Alabama County system nor the small city school systems in the County.
If the “public schools still function” and the “system …. still works as intended”, then is there a reason to fear competition from School Choice? IMO coming in almost dead last in reported world rankings and barely 2/3 of kids graduate HS able to read and do math near grade level says the system in place for a hundred years is a failure. Competition generally improves the quality of products and services.
If your spouse teaches in the public school why risk upsetting the apple cart by pushing for school choice option? 2A Mother makes good observations about the social aspects in a smaller town which buttress my own.
My own small city school district is in the top 10 in the State. Not top 10% but top ten in terms of graduation exam scores, exam pass rates, AP pass rates, kids awarded Merit Scholar and so on. Our small rural school district still functions. Maybe that success blinds me to problems elsewhere. I can say that everyone attends; the children of Physicians alongside the children of day laborers. The entire community still wants the schools to succeed and a huge % make some degree of effort towards that success by volunteering their time or making donations. Perhaps we’re an aberration these days but the community as a whole is still invested in making our schools work and I suspect that’s the difference.
And if she makes a bad decision, Trump’ll take her out just like he did with her husband,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9bY28ik2Fc
¡Lucha libre!
Weak choice.
Should have picked Chris Rufo.
First, kill (figuratively!) all the administrators…
Well, okay, not all of them. Just start culling at the district level. They try to make themselves relevant by coming up with new “initiatives” that do not improve students’ learning but do make more box-ticking for teachers.
To paraphrase Pink Floyd, “Hey admins, leave those teachers alone!”
PS. Of course, scrutinize teachers whose students are not performing as they should be or who otherwise raise red flags–we need to clean house of them as well.
The biggest change when I changed to a charter school was that my pointless paperwork got reduced by about 2 hours per week. It gave me time to actually do my job mostly during my employment hours.
One can’t always judge teachers by the results with students. Some are stuck with low-quality feedstock. Students who are so bad that even the late Grace Hopper could not get through to them.
Use an average. Test the students each year at end of year for subject mastery. The next year a teacher gets assigned 30 students with an average score of say 75 in the subject matter. At end of year if the average score increases by 3 points then the teacher gets a bonus. If it decreases by 3 points they get dinged. If it stays us within the +3/-3 they don’t get anything. Teachers with decreased scores get extra training and a warning. Two consecutive years of decreasing performance and they get fired.
This way no teacher with a class full of dimwits or trouble making students gets slammed. Nor does a teacher who gets the good kids get rewarded.
Quality of students also matter. teachers cannot fix indifferent parents and shit cultures.. Frankly, I cannot see how to fix this.
The same can be said of your local repair shop. If you go in to purchase 4 tires, you expect 4 tires to be competently installed on your car. When you pick it up, you find that 2 tires were installed and the other 2 were left on; however the bill you pay is for all 4 new tires. The shop’s explanation is that the other 2 tires were neglected by you and didn’t really want to be changed. Therefore, he made no effort to change those tires. This is quite literally what is going on in every classroom. What is the reason a kid who has great parents and every social advantage also failing? Mastery is hard and blaming parents and culture is a cop out.
I’ve been a public school teacher, parent of 4 dyslexics and school board gadfly investigating the competency and financing of 1 of Texas largest school districts. TEA took over the district last year when the corruption was finally too great to overlook and explain away.
Put Hulk Hogan in charge of truancy.
State and local governments control the majority of decisions on education. Our school board and superintendent in Blue Fairfax County are all progressives. Our Virginia statehouse is controlled by Democrats; Dobbs has made electing Republicans to send to Richmond quite challenging. Any proposed legislation for school choice will never see the light of day with the Democrats controlling the statehouse.
Ditto. I’m just glad my son was done with Fairfax schools in 2022. It was a near run thing as stuff has been getting worse on a nearly weekly basis.
I’d like to see Trump nominate Allen West for some important position. I wonder if that is a possibility.
Body slam the educrats!