Education Secretary defends agency effort to ‘move education back to states’ in Harrisburg visit
Looking out over a crowd of elementary students in Harrisburg, Education Secretary Linda McMahon proclaimed America has “the greatest students on earth.”
“America, and remember this always, is the greatest nation on earth, and it’s such a privilege to each of us to be born here and to grow up here in this wonderful country of ours,” McMahon said.
Speaking at Foose Elementary School, the first stop on her nationwide tour to promote civics education, McMahon defended her department’s downsizing efforts, which have included mass layoffs and the outsourcing of major functions, but said the Trump administration has no plans to fully dismantle the 45-year-old agency.
McMahon’s “History Rocks! Trail to Independence” tour, is billed as a celebration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
The secretary took a brief tour through the school before speaking to students and playing American and Pennsylvania history-related games with them.
“We want to make students enthusiastic about their country, about their flag, learn about their history,” McMahon said to reporters after the event. “Kids really don’t know civics. They don’t know about their country, and we want to change that.”
The tour has drawn scrutiny because of its partnerships with conservative groups, like Turning Point USA, PragerU and Moms for Liberty. A stop in New Jersey on Friday is drawing ire from some parents, with some planning to keep their children home from school over concerns about Christian conservative ideals being pushed in public schools and the tour’s perspective on history.
One partner in the tour, PragerU, was heavily criticized last summer after posting a video in which an animated version of Frederick Douglass, an abolitionist, says “I’m certainly not OK with slavery, but the founding fathers made a compromise to achieve something great: the making of the United States.”
McMahon said children should learn all of America’s history, even the ugly parts.
“Our history is our history,” she told reporters. “I think the tough things that we overcame throughout our history to get to where we are today is incredibly important.”
The tour marked McMahon’s first public appearance since Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, called for her resignation over McMahon’s moves to make cuts within the department and assign oversight of federal education programs to other federal departments, like labor.
“I’ll resign if she will,” McMahon said, speaking to reporters after the event.
McMahon also directly said she will not dismantle the Department of Education.
“No. Here is what we are doing: We are moving education back to the states,” McMahon said when asked if she was dismantling the department. “So that means there are departments within the Department of Education that will move on to other agencies, and we’re doing that through authority given to us through the Economy Act that we can sign interagency agreements.”
She referenced the interagency agreement between the Department of Education and the Department of Labor, one of six such agreements, that will give the Department of Labor a greater role in administering federal K-12 programs.
“This is a proof of concept, and we believe this is going to be a very successful transfer to the Department of Labor, and when we show that to be true, we will be asking Congress to codify that move,” McMahon said.
Amid those shifts, there have been concerns that special education programs could be moved or that funding could be stripped. McMahon told reporters that both IDEA funding and Title I funding for special education will continue.
Pennsylvania is particularly concerned with education, as state Republicans have prioritized school choice vouchers as a sticking point in budget negotiations. While they didn’t pass in this year’s late budget, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro has said he supports them, as do McMahon and President Donald Trump.
“We have a president that believes that every child should have the best education available to him or her. Whether that’s a public school, a private school, a charter school, a religious school, he is a president who fully believes in school choice,” McMahon said when asked why she chose to tour public schools.
McMahon said part of Trump’s backing of school choice is to “make sure that there is no child trapped in a failing school.”
Reporters were only allowed around four minutes to question the secretary, so it is unclear what her definition of a “failing school” is. But the Harrisburg School District was an interesting choice given that it just exited state control this summer.
It was put under receivership in 2019 after years of financial struggles, one of only three that have gone under the program. Harrisburg schools still post extremely low test scores compared to the state, but were able to use federal funds to help renovate buildings and now have a balanced budget.
Families in the district have high rates of poverty, and the part of the district’s woes relates to a small property tax base because much of the non-residential properties in Harrisburg are government-owned and tax exempt.
According to U.S. News & World Report, Foose enrolls 100% economically disadvantaged students, and only 4% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math, and only 8% passed that level for reading. The school is made up of majority Hispanic/Latino and Black or African American students.