Linda McMahon won confirmation as U.S. education secretary on Monday, gaining Senate approval in a 51-45 vote along party lines.
McMahon’s approval had been expected given the Republican majority, albeit thin, in the Senate. President Donald Trump nominated McMahon to lead his long-promised downsizing of the U.S. Department of Education.
The confirmation came on the same day that Education Department staff faced an 11:59 p.m. ET deadline to voluntarily accept a $25,000 separation agreement in an effort to downsize the federal office workforce. That email went to agency staff on Friday, according to an Education Department spokesperson.
McMahon, a former administrator of the Small Business Administration and former president and CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, said during her Feb. 13 Senate confirmation hearing that she was open to reforming the department but wanted to study specific programs before making commitments for change.
“We are failing our students, our Department of Education, and what we are doing today is not working, and we need to change it,” McMahon said during the hearing before the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. On Feb. 20, the committee voted 12-11 along party lines to advance her nomination for a full Senate vote.
Trump has repeatedly said he wants to close the Education Department — a move that needs congressional buy-in. When asked by Democratic lawmakers if she supported the agency closure, McMahon said Trump wants to end federal bureaucracy in education.
For example, McMahon said education-related civil rights investigations might be housed at the U.S. Department of Justice and that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services could take on oversight of services for students with disabilities.
Of special education oversight, McMahon said, “I’m not sure that it’s not better served in HHS, but I don’t know.” She did say funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Title I programming for low-income schools, and other programs established in statute would need to continue even if the Education Department were shuttered.
In answers to Democratic senators’ written “questions for the record” about Trump’s goal of closing the Education Department, McMahon said, “President Trump believes that the bureaucracy in Washington should be abolished so that we can return education to the states, where it belongs. I wholeheartedly support and agree with this mission and will work with both the White House and Congress to achieve it.”
When asked if she would commit to not suspending or cutting federal funding approved by Congress for student financial aid, loan programs for historically Black colleges and universities, career and technical education, programs that serve students with disabilities, and other programs, McMahon wrote: “I will follow the law.”
And when asked about a proposal in Project 2025 — a blueprint for a Republican administration from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank — to fully privatize the student loan financing system, McMahon wrote, “I am not aware of Project 2025’s proposals on higher education.”
At the confirmation hearing, McMahon said her priorities as education secretary would include expanding school choice and skills-based learning, giving local schools and parents more decision-making power, and protecting students from discrimination and harassment.
During the confirmation process, Republican lawmakers and conservative-leaning organizations praised Trump’s education secretary pick.
“Unlike the Biden Administration, McMahon will not try to dictate singular, nationwide education policies from on-high in Washington,” said members of the Republican Governors Association in a Jan. 7 letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and HELP Committee Chair Bill Cassidy, R-La.. “She will reverse burdensome mandates and target inefficiencies in the Department of Education.”
Democratic policymakers, civil rights advocates and public school supporters, on the other hand, have voiced concerns.
Jacqueline Rodriguez, CEO of the National Center for Learning Disabilities, said in a Feb. 14 statement that during the HELP confirmation hearing, McMahon “lacked familiarity” with IDEA and the Every Student Succeeds Act.
“What’s most unfortunate about Mrs. McMahon’s confirmation hearing is that parents of children with disabilities are left to wonder if their child’s right to a free, appropriate public education is in doubt with proposals to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education,” Rodriguez said.
In a Feb. 19 letter to senators from The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and signed by nearly 100 national organizations, the groups said they “cannot support a nominee who has demonstrated that she seeks to undermine bedrock American principles of equal opportunity, nondiscrimination, and public education itself.”
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