Linda McMahon visits Senate amid education uncertainty

President Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of education on Thursday appeared before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. The hearing comes amid reports that Trump could gut or even abolish the U.S. Department of Education. The Trump Administration this week tore up about $900 million in contracts for standardized testing.

What did McMahon have to say for herself at the hearing? Education will determine whether America succeeds as a nation and whether its workforce is prepared for the future, she said.

Unfortunately, the American education system has declined, she said. Math and reading scores at the K-12 level have dropped across the country to their lowest level in years, McMahon said. Student suicides have risen significantly in the last 20 years, and violent crime recently plagued roughly two-thirds of American university campuses, she added. McMahon blamed these problems on the consolidation of power in the U.S. education system.

What the United States needs is freedom in education rather than government-run systems, she said. The government should value the voices of parents over those of politicians, help people build careers and not college debt, choose states over special interests, and invest in teachers rather than bureaucrats, McMahon said.

Did she say anything about the possibility of Trump gutting the Department of Education? McMahon said neither she nor Trump want to eliminate federal support for education. Rather, their goal is to have the federal government more efficiently support the education of American children. McMahon said both she and Trump want to return much control of education to the state level. Education decisions are best made closer to the child than to Washington, D.C., she said. She acknowledged that Congress would have to be involved in any plans to eliminate or reduce the size of the Department of Education.

What did Senators have to say about McMahon? Committee Chairman Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., said that under Trump and McMahon the United States would have a chance to make much-needed reforms to its education system. Committee Ranking Member Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., said that the education secretary needed to make sure every child in the United States was receiving a quality education. He added that teachers also needed the higher salaries they deserved. The government also needs to assist the 26 million kids in high-poverty school districts, Sanders said.

Dig Deeper: Read Lauren Canterberry’s recent report in The Sift about the decline in American kids’ reading scores.