The Hard Reset America’s Kids Deserve: McMahon Maps Out an Education Renaissance

Education Secretary Linda McMahon took her case for dismantling the Department of Education straight to Fox News’ The Sunday Briefing with Jacqui Heinrich, laying out, methodically and unapologetically, why the federal education bureaucracy must be broken up, decentralized, and returned to the people actually teaching kids every day. If Democrats were hoping her agency’s temporary restructuring during their 43-day government shutdown would embarrass the administration, they miscalculated. It proved her point.

And McMahon wasted no time saying so.

“This is not a back-of-the-envelope, whimsical plan,” she told Heinrich, knocking down the media narrative that the administration’s move is hasty or ideological. “We have done one interagency agreement so far with the Department of Labor… We detailed about 13 personnel over to the Department of Labor… We’ve drawn down 2,000 grants, delivered them to 35 states, and I would venture to guess those states didn’t know where that funding was flowing through and coming back to them because that is the goal—making sure they get their money in a more efficient way.”

In other words: Washington was slowing the system down. When the shutdown forced a real-time experiment, governors got their money faster.

The Education Department’s new restructuring plan includes six additional interagency agreements—two more with Labor, and others that shift large K-12 pass-through operations into departments that already have better infrastructure. McMahon emphasized repeatedly that none of these functions involve curriculum, teacher hiring, or classroom decisions. “This is a matter of pass-through of funding,” she said. “Education does not do that. We are moving… it’s like a merger would happen. It will operate more efficiently.”

McMahon called it a “proof of concept” pilot the shift, measure whether it works, and let Congress make the changes permanent. Her mission is simple: fulfill President Trump’s promise to close the Department of Education for good and return authority to the states.

“Secretary McMahon has been very clear that her goal is to put herself out of a job by shutting down the Department of Education and returning education to the states,” Education Department spokeswoman Madi Biedermann told The Nevada Globe.

McMahon is also conducting a nationwide listening tour, visiting classrooms in all 50 states and building a “toolkit of best practices” drawn from governors, superintendents, teachers, and parents. She points to states like Louisiana and Mississippi, once written off, now posting rising achievement scores through innovation, competition, and local control.

“Let teachers teach. Let states be innovative,” she said. “Take this bureaucracy out of Washington.”

Republicans quickly rallied behind her message. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Democrats’ 43-day shutdown inadvertently made McMahon’s case: “America does not need a federal Department of Education.” NRCC spokesman Christian Martinez added: “Time for the hard reset America’s kids deserve.”

School choice advocate Erika Donalds summed up the record: “$3 trillion spent. Scores declining. Compliance costs skyrocketing. If you’re defending the Department of Education, you’re defending a failure.”

McMahon isn’t waiting for Washington to fix itself. She’s tearing down what isn’t working and building a system that finally puts parents, students, and teachers first.

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