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It was late on Tuesday night when news broke that Linda McMahon would be nominated as the next Secretary of Education. If confirmed, McMahon’s appointment could signal a new chapter in American education, one where pragmatic reforms, a focus on workforce readiness, and a commitment to local control lead the way forward.
McMahon’s career is marked by business acumen, political experience, and public service. Some in the world of education will disdain her rise to prominence as the promoter of a sport that features “figure four leg locks,” “frog splashes,” and “the tombstone piledriver,” and celebrity performers with monikers such as the Cerebral Assassin, the Undertaker, and Stone Cold Steve Austin. But there was a marketing genius behind the successful effort to transform a lowlife hustle into a national spectacle beloved by millions.
McMahon leveraged her success into two bids to be U.S. Senator from Connecticut—first against Richard Blumenthal and then Chris Murphy (Trump supported one of these campaigns). She lost deep-blue Connecticut, but campaigns cemented her as a key figure in the Republican Party.
In 2017, McMahon was appointed to lead the Small Business Administration (SBA), a role she held until 2019. During her tenure, she earned praise for her hands-on approach to cutting bureaucratic red tape, promoting tax reform, and overseeing disaster relief efforts following Hurricane Harvey. Her experience at the SBA—particularly her success in cutting through government inefficiencies—should serve her well at the Department of Education (ED), an agency in dire need of reform. As Peter Wood writes, “In recent years, ED has promoted censorship, intimidation, and the crushing of educational initiative. Comprised of myriad programs and offices, each with its own illiberal agenda. The ED, with its many lifetime bureaucrats, has become a Hydra that enforces conformity to rules that obstruct free inquiry, the pursuit of truth, due process, and justice.”
[RELATED: The Department of Education Needs to Die]
Critics may emphasize McMahon’s limited background in education, but it’s worth noting her experience on the Connecticut State Board of Education and as a board member of Sacred Heart University, where she championed literacy initiatives. She has also been a strong advocate for school choice, local control, and charter schools. While her lack of experience as an educator or school administrator will likely draw criticism, her outsider perspective positions her to challenge the status quo and disrupt entrenched bureaucratic practices.
As my close friend, a lawyer and former congressional staffer, puts it: “The last thing we need is someone with education experience running the [ED]. That’s how we end up with [experts] telling us how to raise our kids. No more RINOs; Trump’s picks are making the establishment grimace, and that’s exactly what we need.”
McMahon champions pragmatic education reform, critiquing traditional one-size-fits-all models as outdated and misaligned with the modern economy. She has advocated for diversifying education through shorter, skills-based programs tailored to local industries, such as IT certifications and healthcare training. Far from dismissing higher education, she calls for an adaptive approach that equips students with tools to thrive in a rapidly evolving job market.
But most excitingly—to me anyway—is that McMahon has been an outspoken critic of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI). She critiqued the Biden administration’s DEI-laden proposed apprenticeship regulations. Released in December 2023—presumably so the public would be too busy with holiday shopping to notice—these regulations, according to McMahon and many others, impose burdensome standards on employers and threaten the effectiveness of apprenticeship programs—they do.
[RELATED: NAS Welcomes Administrator McMahon’s Nomination to Serve as Education Secretary]
Her nomination has garnered praise from prominent education reform leaders, including Rep. Virginia Foxx, Chair of the Committee on Education & the Workforce, who said McMahon’s principled leadership and dedication to student success. Colleagues who have worked with McMahon at America First Policy Institute (AFPI), where McMahon serves as Chair of the Board and Chair of the Center for the American Worker, also express enthusiasm about her appointment. As a friend of mine from AFPI told me, “Education is probably a good fit [for her] … She’s awesome. I would definitely work for her.”
McMahon’s policy positions are still evolving, but her track record of standing firm against entrenched bureaucracies will usher in much-needed reforms. The National Association of Scholars (NAS) is optimistic about McMahon’s potential. NAS has also long advocated for reforms that return liberty to education, and NAS is confident that McMahon will champion these reforms as Secretary of Education.
To this end, as Wood concluded, “we plan to provide Secretary Mahon with a roadmap to reform the [ED].” As for me, I hope she tombstone piledrives the ED.
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Image designed by Jared Gould using image of Linda McMahon by Gage Skidmore on Flickr
The problem with simply abolishing ED is that neither will the problems disappear nor will the people causing them. We’ve seen that when university DEI offices were abolished — the people merely went somewhere else in the admin where they continue to do the same things.
Sending OCR over to Justice makes sense — I’ve never understood why every federal agency has its own Office of Civil Rights — the Federal Railroad Administration has one, see: https://railroads.dot.gov/about-fra/program-offices/office-administrator/office-civil-rights/office-civil-rights
Spinning off other functions, as advocated in the Education chapter of Project 2025 — see: https://www.insidehighered.com/sites/default/files/2024-07/Project%202025%20Education%20Department.pdf — would not be a bad idea. Perhaps rich states should subsidize the education of poor children in poor states — that’s a policy decision but one I could live with. Likewise having the states that eat the food subsidize the education of the children of the migrant farmworkers who produce it.
But this could all be done with need-based block grants. K-12 School Superintendents shouldn’t have to spent half their time dealing with Federal financial paperwork.
And there is a lot of other stuff that ED ought not be doing — but merely eliminating ED won’t prevent some other part of the bloated Federal bureaucracy from doing it. And then we’d be dealing with a dozen or more Departments screwing up education and not just one.
So be careful what you ask for lest you get it. Do not forget that if you cut a starfish in half, you don’t kill it — instead you get two starfish….
Let me reiterate this: If there is something that the Federal government ought not be doing, it doesn’t matter which Federal entity is doing it — or which one will step in to do it when you tell the first to stop doing it.
It’s far more important to establish a THOU SHALT NOT across the entire Federal government than to play “whack a mole” and chase various programs across it.
I can live with an ED bureaucracy wasting lots of taxpayer dollars with its bloated payroll. What’s more important — right now — is getting it to agree what it won’t do — the Thou Shalt Nots…