Freedom to Learn

Education Secretary Linda McMahon on Cutting Bureaucracy, Empowering States, & Fighting Anti-Semitism

• Ginny Gentles • Season 1 • Episode 16

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Recently confirmed U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon joins Freedom to Learn to discuss her plans to reduce bureaucracy at the federal Department of Education while ensuring critical federal funding streams like IDEA and Title I continue to reach states and students. Secretary McMahon also dives into the Trump administration's efforts to enhance educational freedom for parents, strengthen federal research, and tackle the rise of antisemitism on college campuses. 

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Ginny Gentles (0:00)
Welcome to Freedom to Learn, the podcast that champions choice in education, defends parental rights, and exposes the harm caused by school unions. I'm Ginny Gentles, Director of Education, Freedom, and Parental Rights at DFI, the Defense of Freedom Institute in Washington, DC.

Sec. Linda McMahon (0:21)

“I can tell you what the president's primary mission is, and he and I share this. He made it very clear during his campaign and once he was elected that he really wants to shut down the bureaucracy at the Department of Education. That doesn't mean shutting down services to students. It doesn't mean shutting down any of the IDEA funding that Congress appropriates or the Title I funding. And I think that's probably one of the misperceptions that's going on right now.

What we are looking to do is take out the excessive spending and make sure that those dollars that are going to the students are doing the job that they should do.”

Ginny Gentles (0:58)

I had the honor of speaking with Secretary Linda McMahon, who was recently confirmed as the 13th U.S. Secretary of Education. In this conversation, Secretary McMahon shares her mission to streamline the Department of Education, cut unnecessary bureaucracy, and empower states and parents to take more control of K-12 education. We discuss her efforts to ensure that the primary K-12 federal funding streams - the appropriations for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and also Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act - continue to flow to states, districts, and schools. She is adamant that streamlining the federal education bureaucracy will not directly impact funding or students. Secretary McMahon also addresses the Trump administration’s bold steps to put an end to anti-Semitism on college campuses. 

Ginny Gentles (00:00)

Secretary McMahon, welcome to Freedom to Learn.

Sec. Linda McMahon (1:50)

Ginny thanks so much for having me on your podcast. I was looking forward to doing this with you.

Ginny Gentles (1:55)

I'm thrilled that we're having this conversation. You were confirmed as the 13th Secretary of Education about two weeks ago. What's your primary mission?

Sec. Linda McMahon (2:04)

Well, I can tell you what the president's primary mission is, and he and I share this. He made it very clear during his campaign and once he was elected that he really wants to shut down the bureaucracy at the Department of Education. That doesn't mean shutting down services to students. It doesn't mean shutting down any of the IDEA funding that Congress appropriates or the Title I funding. And I think that's probably one of the misperceptions that's going on right now.

But what we are looking to do is take out the excessive spending and make sure that those dollars that are going to the students are doing the job that they should do.

Ginny Gentles (2:41)

Well, before we delve into IDEA and some of the other policy issues a little deeper, let's go ahead and address the reduction in force that happened last week and some of the changes that have been happening at the department. There are people who are concerned that by reducing staff at the U.S. Department of Education, services will be impacted. How do you respond to those concerns?

Sec. Linda McMahon (3:03)

We certainly are not reducing the services that are necessary, but what we did find is we had, you know we just had way too many doing the job. And I welcome the fact that we've had the DOGE group come in. You know, it's an outside audit. I ran a public company. And, every quarter and every year you have to justify your expenses, your revenues, and everything you're doing. And I think probably the one of the biggest companies on earth clearly is the United States government. And I think it's very appropriate that we justify that. What we found was we had more people than we needed to do the same job. And I think that's not something that's unusual when you do come in with an outside audit. So I think we did it very thoughtfully. We looked at every department. We looked at all the jobs that were being done. We did eliminate almost half the staff. But we did it, I think, in the right way, those folks that we have eliminated will actually be doing their job through almost the end of March. And then after that, they'll have 90 days of time with us and then they have a severance package. So they'll continue to funnel information to us during that time, but we will have pared down over the timeframe.

Ginny Gentles (4:25)

I think some people have this perception that the Department of Education is a bunch of teachers who maybe have some sort of direct impact on schools or run schools in some way. When I've looked at the budget justifications for the department, you're talking about over a thousand what's called GS-15s. These are extremely highly paid bureaucrats, over a thousand GS-14s. And in many cases, these are people making close to $200,000 a year. What kind of savings are you going to see from this reduction in force?

Sec. Linda McMahon (4:54)

Now we're going to see about $500 million a year saving by this reduction in force. That's a really substantial amount. And by doing that, as I said before, we're not cutting services. We're not cutting those budgets that will be going to the states. This is strictly personnel and overhead and long overdue, I think.

Ginny Gentles (5:16)

We've been asking some probing questions at the Defense of Freedom Institute and have been assured that a lot of the positions that were impacted by the reduction in force were inward facing and bureaucrats serving bureaucrats for example is something that we've heard rather than those outward facing positions. Let's jump back into a little bit of the policy and the mission that the president and you have.

Right after you were confirmed, you sent a letter to the Department of Education staff that said, “My vision is aligned with the president's to send education back to the states and empower all parents to choose an excellent education for their children.” So President Trump speaks about this a lot about returning education to the states. Right now, about 10% of funding roughly comes from the federal government when you're talking about K-12 education. Much of education policy is set at the state level. So what is it that you all are envisioning? What do you mean when you talk about returning to the states?

Sec. Linda McMahon (6:11)

You know, I think when we, if I looked at it and said, here's what I'd like to see by the time we finish the process, that we would look at those states that we have helped, given them tools, provided them with some best practices that have happened around the country. I mean if you look at many of the states who are now bringing up their NAEP scores, for instance, and I think that's something that, you know we looked at when those scores came out this year, I was just blown away by the fact that we had seen a continual decline in our NAEP scores across the country, except we did have a couple of bright spots. Like in Louisiana, we had, I think they were the best improved with their reading and math scores. And I know Cade Brumley. I've met with him before. I know the effort they were putting in there. We've had the miracle of Mississippi with their reading scores. Florida has just been a shining example of what you can do when you have innovative teachers, governors, superintendents, and you're focusing at the state level. So I think if we continue to provide the right kind of funding into the states and let that funding go to the kids, then we're gonna see those scores go up. You cannot micromanage education from Washington. 

And it's funny when I've been asked, well, you know, what does the Department of Education do? And I've said, well, let me tell you what the Department of Education does not do. We don't educate one child. We don't establish curriculum. We don't hire teachers. We don't supervise superintendents. But what we can do with the dollars that we put into the states is help them then be able to have the kinds of programs that they need. Help encourage school choice so that parents are more involved in getting their children to the schools that they need to get to. So those are all the things that I'd like to see us do much better at the state level. I do think we should continue to provide research to the states that is comparing apples to apples. So that it's a national score like NAEP. And we need to continue to do that because we need to know how we compare. If states develop their own programs, you know, I don't think that compares, or their own research, I don't think that compares one state to another and it doesn't give us a clear indication of what's going on on a national basis.

Ginny Gentles (8:30)

There are a number of concerns when we go back to that reduction in force as to the impact of to IES, Institute [of] Education Sciences, the entity that does put out a lot of those contracts for research. So what I hear you saying is that that research is a priority of this administration? You will be building all that back up?

Sec. Linda McMahon (8:49)

Sure, we might re-bid contracts, we might have some reduction in the contracts. Maybe we'll take a look at it and say, we don't need research in this particular field, but the areas that are really important, and you know, it's going to, I think will be directed by talking to educators in states. And a lot of folks have said, you know, we'd like to see things a little different. There's some research we'd like to see that we're not seeing now. And as I said, we want to provide the tools that'll be helpful, you know, on the local level.

Ginny Gentles (9:19)

Some people don't know that the Department of Education has only been around since 1980. They think it's been around forever. How could you touch this thing that is so precious and essential to our democracy? They might not know that the primary K-12 education streams, funding streams that flow from the federal government, and that's Title I and IDEA, predate the existence of the Department of Education. So how are you communicating to folks so that they can understand Title I, IDEA, that's still in place, and everything's gonna be okay?

Sec. Linda McMahon (9:55)

Well, hopefully doing things like I'm doing this morning, chatting with you. And there will be those who'll be listening to podcasts. I'm doing a lot of media recently and I'll continue to do more and just continue to get that message out there. And I think it was important also to make sure that I intended to work with Congress because I know that those funds are appropriated by Congress and they will still continue to flow through the states.

It's not going to touch those programs through IDEA, which is very, very important, you know, to our disabled students, our special needs students, to make sure they have that funding. And to make sure that we continue to have our OCR, our Office [for] Civil Rights, that's clearly very important that they're funded in the ways that we can make sure that they're doing what they need to do as we look at some of the things that have been going on on campuses, you know, around the country. 

And I just recently met with the president of Columbia University, Dr. Armstrong, talk about the anti-Semitism on campus. It's been something the president has really been focused on. So we want to make sure the Title I funding, IDEA, OCR funding, all of that continues because it's all really very important work.

Ginny Gentles (11:15)

I'm glad to hear you say that funding is going to continue, those investigations are going to continue, that students will continue to receive services, accommodations, and protections and investigations where needed. We do need to be very mindful that we have vulnerable students that deserve better than they're getting from the K-12 education system.

Let's talk a little bit more about the anti-Semitism work that you all are doing before we wrap up. Columbia University receives a lot of attention, but you all are looking into other universities as well, right?

Sec. Linda McMahon (11:46)

Yes, we have, Columbia, I do want to spend just one little second on, because I did have the opportunity to sit and talk with the president of Columbia, Dr. Armstrong. And just to say, that we know that she's only been there six months, but she's already putting in place, I think she expelled some students, I think this week, I told her, I said, you know, there are systemic problems here. And this is not just about Columbia. This is what I would be saying to other presidents.

You really have to look at the faculty that you're bringing in. What kind of vetting are you doing for them that they, when they're brought on campus that they're not sowing these seeds of anti-Semitism. There is no room for any kind of discrimination at all on campus. And that doesn't mean that you shouldn't have free speech, you shouldn't have open dialogue, you shouldn't have open debate, but this is about civil rights and it's about safety on campus. And when you have students who are afraid to walk across campus and go to class because signs are thrust in their face that says, you know, “Let's kill Israel,” or “Down with the United States of America.” These are frightening things and they just cannot be allowed to happen. President Armstrong's totally on board with that. But Columbia was the first university to have federal funding taken away to the amount of $400 million. And a lot of that was research. Some of it was from the Department of Education, some of it from GSA and some of it was from the Justice Department. 

So, all in all, I think we're showing that we're going to have teeth behind what we're saying and they're just going to need to make sure that students on campuses are safe and have their civil rights protected.

Ginny Gentles (13:24)

Okay, so Columbia is much in the news. We'll be hearing about additional steps that are going to be taken for additional universities. And as a parent of a student currently looking into colleges, I'm seeing that there's discussion among parents. We are recognizing in our discussion groups that these universities could be impacted, their federal funding could be impacted.

Sec. Linda McMahon (13:46)

Sure, I mean we started with about I think it was five or six universities, then we sent out, I believe, 60 letters to other universities notifying them that we were gonna be looking into anti-Semitism and their practices and their programs. So it's putting them on alert and letting them know that discrimination is just not gonna be tolerated.

Ginny Gentles (14:08)

We really appreciate that from the Defense of Freedom Institute perspective. This is a priority area of ours, as are the other areas that you're addressing, and that's expanding educational options. In a future conversation, hopefully we can talk about what you're doing to ensure that parental rights are protected. But we're grateful for your leadership, for your willingness to serve. And thank you, Secretary McMahon, for your commitment to education freedom and parental rights. And thank you for joining Freedom to Learn.

Sec. Linda McMahon (14:36)

Thank you so much. I look forward to doing it again.

Ginny Gentles (14:39)
Freedom to Learn is a production of the Defense of Freedom Institute. You can learn more about DFI at DFIpolicy.org. If you have feedback or suggestions for future podcasts, please reach out to us at podcast@DFIpolicy.org. If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe and leave a rating and review wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.