Linda McMahon once more defends dismantling the Schooling Division : NPR

U.S. Schooling Secretary Linda McMahon sparred with Democrats on the Home training committee Thursday on a go to to Capitol Hill to defend the Trump administration’s new funds proposal.

The lawmakers and training secretary tussled over a number of key training points that may have an effect on the lives of thousands and thousands of People, together with whether or not new Republican caps on federal scholar loans will decrease the price of school, what function the federal government ought to play in making an attempt to enhance abysmal literacy charges amongst U.S. college students — and whether or not the U.S. Division of Schooling ought to exist in any respect.

Listed below are a few of the moments that stood out from the listening to.

The tip of the Schooling Division?

Beginning with their opening statements, McMahon and the committee’s high Democrat, Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia, made clear the listening to wasn’t simply concerning the U.S. Division of Schooling’s funds for the following fiscal 12 months; it was an existential combat over the division itself.

McMahon’s first phrases to the committee, after the standard thank-you’s, have been a flag-planting for the division’s forceful dissolution.

“The American individuals elected President Trump with a transparent mandate: to sundown a 46-year-old, $3 trillion failed federal training forms in Washington, D.C., and return authority to the place it belongs, to oldsters, lecturers and native leaders,” McMahon informed lawmakers.

This after Scott, in his opening remarks, informed McMahon, “The Trump administration has not returned training to the states, somewhat it has empowered you to successfully dismantle one of many nation’s strongest civil rights establishments.”

In line with information from the Workplace of Personnel Administration (OPM), the Division of Schooling has gone from roughly 4,200 workers in 2024 to 2,300 in 2026.

Along with reducing workers by roughly 45%, the administration has offloaded greater than 100 applications and division obligations onto different federal businesses, together with many elementary and secondary education schemes to the Division of Labor (DOL) and efforts at bettering household engagement to the U.S. Division of Well being and Human Providers (HHS).

In one of many newest large shifts, in March, the division introduced a transition of the nation’s huge federal scholar mortgage portfolio to the U.S. Treasury Division. By August, remaining division workers might be bodily moved from the division’s longtime, Washington, D.C., headquarters to a smaller workplace roughly a block away.

Whereas the dismantling was roundly condemned by the committee’s Democrats, Republicans cheered McMahon’s efforts through the listening to. “I hope you are the final secretary of training,” Republican Rep. Randy Wonderful of Florida informed her, intending it as a praise, not a critique.

However the dismantling has additionally gotten… bizarre. In line with inner Schooling Division paperwork obtained by NPR, the division’s scholar mortgage workplace, which was minimize in half by final 12 months’s reduction-in-force, is now in the course of a hiring spree.

The Workplace of Federal Pupil Help (FSA) is making an attempt to herald 334 new workers – a tacit acknowledgement that the earlier cuts did severe hurt to the workplace’s capability to do its work.

The way forward for particular training oversight

One of many division’s most vital tasks — overseeing applications and funding for college kids with disabilities — has not but been offloaded to a different federal company, partially due to fierce pushback from disability-rights advocates. At one level within the listening to, McMahon mentioned she had met with “twenty-something” incapacity teams to listen to their considerations.

McMahon has explored shifting the administration of the People with Disabilities Schooling Act (IDEA), the nation’s landmark particular training regulation, to both DOL or HHS, and Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, an Oregon Democrat, used Thursday’s listening to to push for readability on any potential transfer.

McMahon mentioned, “We have now not but made a willpower of the place IDEA providers would go.”

“Do you propose to switch the providers to a different company? Sure or no,” Bonamici shot again.

“Properly, ultimately, congresswoman, you do know that —”

“Only a sure or no,” Bonamici interjected.

However McMahon held agency: “It isn’t a sure or no reply. I am sorry. We might be trying to switch and, first, co-administering these applications with different businesses.”

Of all the choices McMahon has made to this point, shifting particular training oversight might be one of the vital consequential — and controversial — which explains why it hasn’t occurred but.

Chopping, rehiring and probably extra reducing on the Workplace for Civil Rights

McMahon fielded powerful questions from Rep. Mark Takano, a California Democrat, about cuts to the Schooling Division’s Workplace for Civil Rights (OCR), which investigates complaints of discrimination in faculties based mostly on college students’ intercourse, race, nationwide origin, incapacity and extra.

OCR was hit onerous in final 12 months’s layoffs and firings, with roughly half of the workplace’s workers, together with civil rights attorneys, being eliminated. After the courts intervened, the division below McMahon selected to maintain 247 OCR workers on paid administrative depart, somewhat than permit them to work — a choice a authorities watchdog says value taxpayers between $28.5 million and $38 million.

Earlier NPR reporting, utilizing public information, captures the impact of the cuts:

• After Trump’s 2025 inauguration, OCR reached a decision settlement in simply two racial harassment circumstances the remainder of the 12 months. In 2017, the primary 12 months of the primary Trump administration, it resolved greater than 30.  
• In 2017, the Trump-led OCR reached agreements in roughly 10 occasions as many incapacity discrimination circumstances because it did in 2025.
• And at last, OCR resolved practically 60 sexual harassment circumstances and 15 sexual assault circumstances in 2017. After Trump’s second inauguration, the workplace didn’t attain a decision settlement in a single case of school-based sexual harassment or sexual assault for the remainder of the 12 months. 

In her Home testimony, McMahon insisted that “OCR is vital” and mentioned she is actively “rehiring attorneys.” She has even intimated that she disagreed with the unique staffing cuts, telling Takano that the administration “had began that course of earlier than I got here onboard.”

Right here Takano pushed again: “They have been firing half the workers that you just want at OCR, and it took you 10 months to determine that was a mistake.”

Then Takano requested McMahon, if she is rehiring attorneys and absolutely helps the mission of OCR, why does the division’s personal funds suggest a brand new 35% minimize in funding to the workplace?

McMahon answered that the funds doc “is a ground for hiring. We need to enhance these numbers.”

It isn’t clear why the administration’s funds request to Congress recommends a minimize in OCR funding that McMahon doesn’t seem to help. The Schooling Division didn’t instantly reply to a request for clarification.

A second later, within the listening to, McMahon mentioned the funding proposal is “not the place we need to be.”

Pupil mortgage adjustments

One topic introduced up by Democrats and Republicans was the brand new restrict on federal scholar mortgage borrowing that was handed as a part of Republicans’ One Huge Stunning Invoice Act.

The regulation doesn’t change limits for undergraduate debtors however dramatically scales again how a lot graduate college students can borrow. They may beforehand borrow as much as the price of their program, however new limits cap annual borrowing for many grad college students at $20,500 with a complete restrict of $100,000. Solely a shortlist of what are labeled skilled applications — together with medication, regulation and dentistry — might be allowed loans as much as $50,000 a 12 months and $200,000 general.

Early in her testimony, McMahon complained that “school prices are simply exorbitant. College students are burdened with debt. … We actually should do one thing to convey down the price of school.”

Particularly, the price of schools’ graduate applications. Graduate loans make up practically half of all new loans, regardless that graduate college college students are a a lot smaller fraction of general debtors.

Later within the listening to, Democrats argued these new graduate mortgage limits would result in shortages in instructing, social work and nursing.

Wonderful, the Florida Republican, echoed the priority over a possible scarcity of expert healthcare employees and requested McMahon, “Does it make sense for us to take a subject the place we now have actual shortages and create a state of affairs the place we could not have the ability to create the [healthcare workers] we’d like, the place we already do not have sufficient?”

McMahon provided two arguments in protection of those new mortgage limits. First, that the price of most superior nursing levels, for instance, would nonetheless fall inside or close to the brand new mortgage caps and that undergraduate nursing applications won’t be affected. Second, she argued that these caps are supposed to pressure schools to decrease their costs.

“It’s our general objective to convey down the price of school and training,” McMahon informed Wonderful. “And I do assume that, relative to the shortages we’re having, if we are able to convey down the price for nurses in faculties, we are able to get extra college students to use.”

McMahon talked about that a number of schools have already lowered their costs in response to the caps. Amongst them is the College of California at Irvine’s Flex MBA program.

However the connection between accessibility of federal scholar loans and college value tags is extremely difficult, and several other economists have informed NPR that capping graduate loans, whereas it might stop some debtors from taking over money owed they can’t repay, is not prone to result in widespread value cuts.

Pupil achievement

Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York invoked a “literacy and studying disaster within the nation” and requested McMahon what she’s doing to fight this disaster.

Disaster certainly. A brand new report out Wednesday, referred to as the Schooling Scorecard, says U.S. faculties have been in a “studying recession” for greater than a decade, tracing drops in studying and math scores to not the pandemic however years earlier, to round 2013.

“We have now clearly failed our college students,” McMahon mentioned, noting that “the best enchancment we now have seen in literacy scores… have been in these states like Mississippi and Louisiana and Florida who’ve adopted the science of studying. These are state initiatives, they usually originated on the state degree.”

McMahon was spot-on in celebrating Louisiana particularly. In line with that new assessment of scholar efficiency, Louisiana is the one state to return to 2019 scholar efficiency ranges in studying and math each. Alabama additionally deserves credit score for a exceptional turnaround in math.

The Scorecard does, nonetheless, counsel that, whereas Florida has embraced reforms across the science of studying, it’s no success story. From 2022 to 2025, Florida ranked thirty fifth out of 35 states in studying progress.

McMahon and several other committee Republicans touted the administration’s proposed MEGA (Make Schooling Nice Once more) grants as a strong new instrument to assist states enhance literacy.

Nonetheless, these proposed grants would truly be a funding minimize to colleges, by consolidating 17 present applications (together with for English learners and rural faculties) funded at roughly $6.5 billion right into a block grant value lower than a 3rd of that: $2 billion.

Edited by: Nirvi Shah
Visible design and improvement by: LA Johnson