Education Secretary Linda McMahon meets with Pa. legislators to discuss potential closure of US Department of Education
Alex Brandon / Associated Press
Education Secretary Linda McMahon speaks during a meeting in the East Room of the White House, Sept. 4, 2025, in Washington.
U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon met earlier this month in Harrisburg with Pennsylvania Republican legislators, including Lancaster County state Rep. Bryan Cutler, to talk about giving states control of educational programming by dismantling the U.S. Department of Education.
“The secretary was really highlighting the federal government’s desire, and specifically the (Pennsylvania Department of Education’s), to empower parents and local school districts in terms of education,” Cutler said Tuesday.
McMahon told more than a dozen legislators in attendance that closing the Department of Education would require action from Congress and discussed many job duties that have been reassigned outside the department, Cutler said. Addressing funding concerns related to a possible closure, he said McMahon said federal education funding would continue to flow “but would be coming from a different spigot.”
Earlier this month, McMahon began touring the country, stopping in Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey schools, to highlight local programs demonstrating community leadership. She met with students and teachers Dec. 4 at Foose Elementary School, which is part of Harrisburg Community Schools, according to the department.
“The Trump administration’s goal is clear,” McMahon said in a video promoting her tour. “Take the bureaucracy out of education, expand school choice and make sure every student has access to quality education.”
With an advertised goal of celebrating America’s 250th anniversary, McMahon’s visits have been criticized by parents for being sponsored by overtly partisan and religious organizations like Turning Point USA and Moms for Liberty. Turning Point USA is a conservative political group whose founder, Charlie Kirk, was assassinated in September, and Moms for Liberty is a parental rights group whose members have targeted what they deem sexually explicit material in school libraries.
McMahon’s visit to a New Jersey school was met with protesters and some parents keeping their children home so they would not have to attend her assembly, according to a report by the New York Times.
Her meeting with Pennsylvania legislators followed her stop at Foose Elementary. The meeting was attended mainly by policymakers who have worked closely on issues promoting state involvement in education legislation, said Cutler, who serves the southern end of Lancaster County and is the Republican co-chair of the House Education Committee for the 2025-26 legislative session.
State Senate Majority Caucus Chair Kristin Phillips-Hill, representing York County, also attended. Phillips-Hill did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
School choice
During the Dec. 4 meeting, Cutler said he was exploring opportunities to promote career and technical education through the state Educational Improvement and Opportunity Scholarship tax credit programs, which allow participants to divert their tax credits to send students qualifying for financial aid or from low-achieving school districts to private schools.
“You’re going to have 50 states and the territories doing, essentially, labs that could produce, you know, improved results,” Cutler said about the possible decentralization of educational policy.
Increasing support to career and technical education is a goal of Cutler’s as the Republican Education Committee chair, as he studied two years at the Lancaster General School of Radiology in the 1990s.
Career and technology programs are an example of finding success through operating a program locally rather than federally, Cutler said. Each career and technical center has a board made up of representatives sitting on the boards of local school districts.
“The programs vary from area to area, but there’s really a lot of opportunities for individuals to get good-paying jobs right out of school,” Cutler said.
He said Tuesday that the meeting earlier this month, his first with McMahon, left him feeling excited that the dissolution of the U.S. Department of Education would “empower the state” and “give parents the opportunities to be better involved.”