WASHINGTON (TNND) — The Trump administration is taking its “most decisive steps yet” to reduce Washington’s influence over U.S. education, according to Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon.
McMahon on Thursday said six new interagency partnerships are aimed at streamlining federal bureaucracy and shifting authority back to state agencies, local superintendents, and school boards.
The Democrat’s government shutdown proved, without a doubt, American’s don’t need the Department of Education,” McMahon said during White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s news briefing.That’s why our final mission as a department is to fully empower states to carry the torch of our educational renaissance,” she added. “Education is local. It should be overseen locally by those who best know local needs.”
Leavitt agreed. She said the agreements will significantly shrink the bureaucracy at the DOE.
“This common sense action brings the Trump Administration much closer to finally bringing education where it belongs — at the state and local level, not in Washington, D.C.,” Leavitt said.
McMahon said the nation’s next generation will look back and be thankful for an education system that prioritizes students over bureaucracy.
The agreements will effectively move billions of dollars in grant programs to other agencies. Most notable is one that will put the Department of Labor over some of the largest federal funding streams for K-12 schools, including Title I money for schools serving low-income communities.
Opponents have urged against such a shake-up, saying it could disrupt programs that support some of the nation’s most vulnerable student populations.
States rely on Education Department officials for expertise that other agencies might not have, said Angélica Infante-Green, Rhode Island’s K-12 education chief.
“People might think it’s just funding and giving them the money, but it’s not,” Infante-Green said in an interview with The Associated Press. “It is about how to co-mingle some of the funds to educate a child. So if a child is in special education but is also a multilingual learner and they’re in poverty, how do you use that to educate the child holistically?”
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EDITOR’S NOTE: The Associated Press contributed to this report.
