On Linda McMahon, DOGE, and Attacks on Education Research

Hi friends.

I don’t have to tell anyone that there’s been a non-stop barrage of news coming out of Washington, D.C. over the past couple weeks. And for someone who literally wrote a book about billionaire influence on public policy—in this case, education—it all feels like we’ve collectively raced past any warning signs and straight into crisis.

But let’s try to make sense of a few ongoing developments moving so fast that they may well be further along by the time you read this.

The McMahon Hearing

First, let’s start with some comments on Linda McMahon’s confirmation hearing to lead the U.S. Department of Education.

McMahon appeared at kind of an awkward moment, which more than one Democratic senator acknowledged, in that she was there to testify for leadership of a department that Trump had less than 24 hours earlier said should be disbanded “immediately.”

(Trump also called the Education Department a “con job,” which may be why he appointed someone who made her billions hocking fake wrestling matches on national television.)

It was a long hearing, but there were a few moments that stood out to me:

First, note that McMahon was flanked by top staff from Betsy DeVos’s voucher lobby group, the American Federation for Children, one of whom sat directly behind her for the hearing itself.

Second, McMahon said “I don’t know” and “we’ll have to see” when Senator Tim Kaine asked whether IDEA would actually be enforced if it left the U.S. Department of Education and was placed, for example, in Health and Human Services. This is a Project 2025 idea, and it would result in Robert F. Kennedy Jr. overseeing special education funding and programming.

Third, McMahon noted (correctly) that the U.S. Department of Education doesn’t set curriculum policy. Which puts her at odds with other Trump Administration and right-wing influencers who claim the federal government has been indoctrinating children. It’s also at odds with McMahon’s answers to questioning during the hearing about whether Trump’s executive order on education content could restrict what local public schools teach. She appeared to suggest it could, but hedged a bit on a final answer.

Fourth, I think it’s important that Senator Murkowski—a Republican—pointed out that many education reform strategies were built for urban and suburban markets, while doing nothing for rural communities. This is true, not just for school choice policies, but also “reforms” like firing teachers and assuming a better pool of educators is just waiting around town to be hired.

Speaking of failed education market strategies, for me a key positive moment came when Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin entered four research studies into the Senate record. Those four studies detail the devastating academic impacts for children who used school vouchers to transfer to private school over the past decade. I write about these studies in my book, The Privateers, and in the book I explain how those devastating impacts forced the voucher lobby to pivot back to culture war strategies to sell the voucher story.

Finally, Linda McMahon went on record that private schools funded by taxpayer vouchers—including through a federal voucher scheme—should and do have the right to turn away any child who doesn’t fit those private schools’ needs or values. Always remember, when it comes to voucher schemes, it’s not about parent choice at all; it’s the school’s choice.

Now’s a great time, by the way, to shout out to the great Jessica Levin, ELC’s Litigation Director, who’s quoted in this must-read new New Yorker piece on what Trump’s education agenda might mean for students with disabilities. To quote Jessica directly: “The vast majority of IDEA rights only apply to public school students. These rights are all lost when a student goes to a private school.”

To summarize the Linda McMahon hearing, the best I can say for her is that she was an able spokesperson for the nonsense, the contradictions, and, in some cases, the outright scheming behind the Musk-Trump education agenda.

Musk, IES, and More

The other item to flag here is that Elon Musk—who is functionally all but in control of federal governmental operations—has his team inside the Education Department already. So much of the debate about how far Trump and McMahon could push a plan to dismantle the Department is sort of behind, in real time, some of the facts on the ground.

We know that the administration is laying off key staff members inside the department, and that Musk’s young army of programmers appears to have access to key data systems.

We also know that under the auspices of his “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, Musk has cancelled nearly $1 billion in contracts run out of the Institute for Education Sciences (IES), the key research and data arm of the federal education agency.

The hypocrisy there is that many of these contracts and grants were directly supporting studies of what works best for children in public schools, something the administration claims it wants to know. Those studies include research on math and literacy supports, mental health, college access, educating students with disabilities, and—get this!—whether or not the Washington, D.C. voucher scheme (the only voucher system funded by the federal government in place to date) is actually working.

All of this is basically in line with the administration’s efforts to cut billions of dollars from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, cuts that federal courts are taking a close look over at this very moment.

My own research was a beneficiary of IES funding for years. I was in the inaugural cohort of doctoral students funded by IES during the first term of George W. Bush’s administration, back when Republicans at least claimed to believe in knowing what works for schools. I was part of teams that won major grants to study literacy reforms in Michigan, and led the $2 million, Michigan-specific site for the Education Department’s R&D center on school choice research.

All of which is to stay, in addition to knowing just how important the U.S. Department of Education is to kids and families across the country, I also deeply believe in its support for learning more about how to make education work for all kids in this country. And have given my career to that work thus far.

What it comes down to, though, is that we’re in a period of American politics and policy where facts really don’t matter to many of the folks in charge. Even when—especially when—those facts run counter to rightwing ideological priorities. Just take the school voucher case.

As I say in my book, “if evidence meant anything, vouchers would have ended years ago,” such has been the devastating toll of these programs for so many children.

None of this is an excuse to sit back and watch all this destruction unfold. But it’s worth taking a moment to just name, again, what’s at stake. It’s not only public schools. It’s more and more a question of democracy and of the truth itself.

Josh

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