SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
President Trump has given Linda McMahon, his pick to lead the Education Department, an unusual mandate.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I said to Linda – I said, Linda, I’m making you the secretary of education. But if you do a great job, you will put yourself out of a job because you’re going to be sending it back to the states. And she’s fantastic.
DETROW: McMahon is the former CEO of WWE, then served as administrator of the Small Business Administration during President Trump’s first term. During her confirmation hearing, she decried what she called a public education in decline.
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LINDA MCMAHON: If confirmed as secretary, I will work with Congress to reorient the department toward helping educators, not controlling them.
DETROW: In fact, the Education Department does not specifically determine what gets taught in the classroom. What it does do is oversee programs that send billions of dollars to schools that serve low-income families and help educate kids with disabilities. This money has been one of the top concerns for lawmakers and educators as Trump talks about closing the department. McMahon tried to address this during her hearing in an exchange with Republican Senator Bill Cassidy.
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MCMAHON: I believe, as he does, that the best education is closest to the child and not, certainly, for Washington, D.C.
BILL CASSIDY: If the department is downsized, would the states and localities still receive the federal funding which they currently…
MCMAHON: Yes.
CASSIDY: OK. With that, I…
MCMAHON: It is not the president’s goal to defund the programs. It is only to have it operate more efficiently.
DETROW: Unwinding the department in the name of efficiency has already begun. Elon Musk’s DOGE team eviscerated the department’s research division and has been allowed access by a judge to internal department systems. The department cut $600 million in funding for teacher training on what the administration framed as inappropriate and unnecessary topics, including critical race theory.
The administration has given schools and universities until February 28 to eliminate diversity initiatives or risk losing federal money. And many newer department staffers have received termination letters while dozens of department staff were placed on administrative lead with little explanation. But it would take an act of Congress to fully eliminate the department.
CONSIDER THIS – the Trump administration wants the Department of Education gone, but can they get rid of it? And if they do, how much money would actually be saved, and which programs could be lost in the process?
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DETROW: From NPR, I’m Scott Detrow.
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DETROW: It’s CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. Quote, “the Department of Education is a big con job.” That is just one of the things President Trump has said about one of the most high-profile departments in the federal government. Trump says he wants to save money and kill policies he doesn’t like. Trump and Elon Musk’s DOGE have already started cutting funding. So what does this mean for education in the United States? It’s one of the questions we will put to two former education secretaries. John King ran the department during Barack Obama’s second term, and Margaret Spellings was education secretary in the George W. Bush administration. They both join me now to talk about what all of this could mean. Welcome to the show.
JOHN KING: Thanks so much.
MARGARET SPELLINGS: Thank you.
DETROW: Let me start here. I would love each of you to tell me what you think the most important role the Department of Education plays. Margaret, I’ll start with you.
SPELLINGS: The Department of Education was founded because we have a shared American belief that education is a great equalizer, and too often, kids – their futures were determined by their ZIP code or a lack of resources, and so we thought – and I think most still do think – that it’s a national imperative that we level that playing field and, through various programs in K-12 and in higher ed, work to provide opportunity for all students.
KING: I would agree with Margaret I’d say the funding that the department provides is crucial. There’s the Title I program that helps schools serving low-income students. There’s IDA funding, which is the funding for services for students with disabilities. There’s the Pell Grant program that makes higher education accessible for low-income students. That’s the way the government acts on the belief in the role of education that Margaret described.
DETROW: You know, there’s a lot we don’t know yet, but the thing that the Trump people are talking about is they want to keep a lot of that critical funding but perhaps get rid of the department itself or massively cut down the department or shift these funding programs to some other department. I’m curious – and John, I’ll start with you – how would that change things if, again, the bulk of this money remains, but the apparatus administering it is gone? How much does that worry?
KING: Well, remember that the department also plays a critical civil rights enforcement role. It’s the place where you go if you’re experiencing discrimination, whether it’s based on race or gender. It’s the place that is protecting the rights of students. That would not be easy for another agency to do. And you want the leadership of the department to focus a national conversation on the urgency of good educational outcomes in K-12 and in higher education.
DETROW: Margaret Spellings, the Department of Education money, but no Department of Education. Is that a doable thing in your mind?
SPELLINGS: Well, I guess it’s theoretically doable. I guess things – it makes me want to ask questions like, does that mean then that local school districts and universities and colleges are going to have to interface with a multitude of agencies, whether it’s HHS or the Homeland Security, or the Department of Justice or the Department of the Treasury and on and on and on. And I wonder, is that a more efficient way to run things than currently? I mean, what is the problem we’re trying to solve?
And to the extent that people are frustrated with, you know, the lack of student achievement that we’ve seen, particularly post-COVID, and what folks perceive as, you know, indoctrination or a woke agenda coming from school districts, then they should take those issues to their local school boards and to their state legislatures because there are expressed prohibitions against that from the federal department.
DETROW: I want to talk about some of those things, and I really want to talk about just the broader state of education. But Margaret Spellings, quick question to you. For a long time, Republicans have criticized the reach, the size of the Department of Education. How different to you is this particular moment what the Trump administration is calling for from what we’ve seen for decades?
SPELLINGS: Well, you’re right. I mean, it’s been sort of standard Republican orthodoxy, except for my former boss, George W. Bush. And, you know, is it right for us to calibrate the right role between the feds, the states and the locals? You bet, and we’ve been doing that over the many decades from very minuscule to more muscular as we’ve had in the time with more accountability and more attention around student achievement. And that’s the other thing that I worry about getting lost on the cutting room floor is transparency around the quality of education for all kids and the accountability muscle that we have through the national education report card and requirements for assessment and reading and math in a disaggregated way.
DETROW: John King, I want to ask you about another big part of this. We’re seeing these executive orders ordering schools to get rid of DEI. What are you most worried about when it comes to these ideological orders coming out of the Trump administration and how it affects education in local school districts?
KING: Well, you worry about confusion. It’s very hard to understand what exactly is meant by the phrase DEI when it’s used by the current administration, and you see schools doing things that are deeply troubling – removing books from the library about subjects like slavery or the civil rights movement, taking down a poster of Harriet Tubman. You see schools questioning whether or not they can continue to teach African American history. That is deeply worrisome. We are better off if we are teaching students the whole truth about our history and engaging with the hard parts of our history as well as the wonderful parts.
DETROW: Another thing I want to put to both of you – and, John, I’ll start with you – we – I mean, we’ve just got those high-level data back showing that so many students across the country still struggling with basics, like reading and math post-COVID. Is there an argument that the current system just isn’t working?
KING: Look, we need to do a lot better, and my fear is that this debate about the future of the department is actually distracting from the national conversation we should be having about how we urgently improve outcomes. You know, the NAEP results, the National Assessment results show that a third of eighth-graders are below basic in reading. That means those students are on a path that will lead to not graduating from high school, not being able to get a decent job. We should have our hair on fire about that, and we should be looking to national leaders to talk about what we do next to improve reading and math and high school graduation. Instead, we’re just debating whether or not the department should exist.
DETROW: Margaret Spellings, same question to you. Given how frustrated so many people are across the country with where things are right now, does this help or hurt?
SPELLINGS: I believe it hurts.
DETROW: Yeah.
SPELLINGS: And, you know, John just mentioned the data. That data is particularly troubling for low-income and special needs students who really have not recovered at all from COVID. Our absenteeism across this country is just shocking and abhorrent. And so, you know, we’re taking our eye off the ball when we talk about kind of the administrative niceties of programs, programs that are pretty direct to school districts and to states. And frankly, you know, our block grants that work pretty efficiently while, you know, Rome is burning, and we ought to be talking about the future workforce of our country.
DETROW: That’s two former education secretaries, Margaret Spellings and John King. Thank you so much to both of you for joining us.
KING: Thanks.
SPELLINGS: Thanks.
DETROW: This episode was produced by Jordan-Marie Smith and Elena Burnett and was edited by Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun. Thanks to our CONSIDER THIS+ listeners who support the work of NPR journalists and help keep public radio strong. Supporters also hear every episode without messages from sponsors. You can learn more at plus.npr.org.
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DETROW: It’s CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. I’m Scott Detrow.
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