Trump’s education plans, secretary pick must be carefully vetted

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President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for secretary of education, Linda McMahon, is among the more reasonable nominations he’s made to serve in his Cabinet. McMahon, who led the Small Business Administration in Trump’s first term, is the only official from his prior administration the president-elect so far seeks to place in his Cabinet.

Before entering public service, McMahon was a top executive at WWE, helping build it into a multi-million-dollar operation, before stepping down in 2009 to run for Senate in Connecticut. She lost races in 2010 and 2012; however, to her credit, both of her Democratic opponents from Connecticut — Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy — endorsed her nomination to lead the SBA.

Yet even with her apparent business savvy and political exposure, her resume specifically in regard to education is thin. She has little direct experience in the field, having briefly served on the Connecticut State Board of Education and on the board of trustees for Sacred Heart University, a Catholic institution in Fairfield, Conn.

Like Trump’s other Cabinet-level nominees so far, her primary qualification seems to be loyalty. Every president demands it. But it is especially important for Congress to carefully consider her on her merits, in light of President-elect Trump’s education platform and the far-reaching changes he has pledged to pursue.

Trump’s promise to shut down the Department of Education and transfer its functions to the states does not serve the best interests of students from Minnesota or any other state in the union. The growing challenges and drive to dismantle diversity efforts in education also fall under that umbrella of concern.

The Department of Education was created as a stand-alone department in 1980, after being part of the Health, Education and Welfare Department. Its mission was — and continues to be — collecting national education information, promoting equal access to education and ensuring that consequential policies, especially in the area of civil rights, are applied nationally.

The department is still needed to oversee and provide some funding nationally for lower-income students, gender equality in sports, special education and college grants and scholarships. Federal intervention either from the courts or Congress led to important changes within education that might not otherwise have happened. A states’ rights approach in those areas would have created a patchwork of policies that varied from state to state.

The House Education Workforce Committee chair, Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., praised McMahon as a “principled leader, committed to the well-being and success of students and clear-eyed about what is needed to empower them.”

But others have rightly spoken to the importance of pushing back against elements of what the incoming administration hopes to accomplish.

In an emailed statement this week, Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., who serves on the Education Committee, said McMahon must answer important questions during confirmation hearings “including her position on President-elect Trump’s past statements vowing to dismantle the Department of Education, and whether she would implement that plan. The Department of Education administers more than $18 billion in Title 1 grants to fund neighborhood schools and $14 billion to cover costs for educating kids with special needs. Eliminating that federal aid would hurt kids and their learning, throw local school districts into crisis, and diminish what schools are able to accomplish … .”

National Education Association President Becky Pringle echoed the sentiment. The “extreme proposal” to eliminate the Department of Education, she said, would “steal resources for our most vulnerable students, increase class sizes, cut job training programs, make higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle class families, take away special education services for disabled students, and put student civil rights protections at risk.”