The government shutdown proved an argument that conservatives have been making for 45 years: the Department of Education is mostly a pass-through for funds that are best managed by the states.
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Our nation just experienced the longest government shutdown in its history. The 43-day shutdown, which came smack in the middle of the fall semester, showed every family how unnecessary the federal education bureaucracy is to their children’s education. Students kept going to class. Teachers continued to get paid. There were no disruptions in sports seasons or bus routes.
The shutdown proved an argument that conservatives have been making for 45 years: The U.S. Department of Education is mostly a pass-through for funds that are best managed by the states.
That’s why, now that the government shutdown is over, we are emboldened to fulfill President Donald Trump’s promise to return education to the states.
To be clear, returning education to the states does not mean the end of federal support for education. It simply means the end of a centralized bureaucracy micromanaging what should be a state-led responsibility. Funding for low-income students and students with disabilities predates the Education Department and will continue indefinitely. Protecting students’ civil rights is work that will never go away.
These critical functions are required by law and will continue – even if the building where they are housed does not have “Education” on the door.
Education is best managed by those closest to families
We’ll peel back the layers of federal bureaucracy by partnering with agencies that are better suited to manage programs and empowering states and local leaders to oversee the rest. These partnerships are commonplace across the federal government to improve service delivery and increase efficiency.
In May, the department established a successful partnership with the Department of Labor to better coordinate federal workforce development programs, and together the agencies launched the first-of-its-kind integrated state plan portal and streamlined federal workforce development programs. We believe that other department functions would benefit from similar collaborations.
I know that education is best managed by the educators and leaders closest to families, because I have witnessed innovative schools and outstanding educators delivering for students across the country. We’ll continue our 50-state listening tour to hear from students, teachers, and K-12 and postsecondary leaders about the education strategies that are improving learning outcomes in their communities. We plan to spotlight these best practices to help state leaders craft policies that work.
We will also continue to reduce federal micromanagement with every tool at our disposal. The agency has advised states on flexibilities they already have in their Title I funding and school choice measures they can pursue under current federal rules.
We will continue offering states opportunities such as waivers from burdensome regulations so they can design custom arrangements at the local level, rather than struggle to meet one-size-fits-all mandates.
This is just the start of ending federal education bureaucracy
In higher education, we are refocusing a broken federal funding system to promote career skills that will make American workers the best in the world. Enabled by federal student lending limits that are not tied to program quality or return on investment, colleges have saddled generations of borrowers with $1.7 trillion in debt without guaranteeing a quality education.
We’re hard at work implementing the reforms Congress passed in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to fix skyrocketing tuition costs and incentivize degrees and short-term certificates that leave students better off and deliver hard skills.
We’re also enforcing federal discrimination laws to protect all students, which will push colleges to focus less on political activism and more on meaningful learning.
This administration is aggressively reducing and reforming the federal education bureaucracy to prove that there is a smarter way to deliver quality education at every level. Our reforms are more than a proof of concept; they are the first step toward congressional legislation that will make these changes permanent.
Conservatives have wanted to rein in the Department of Education since the day it was created by President Jimmy Carter in 1979 and began operating in 1980. They rightfully feared the federal encroachment on a distinctly states’ rights issue. Fast-forward 45 years, and our students are still paying for this failed experiment – students can’t read proficiently, America’s test scores are behind the world in math and science, and college graduates are drowning in debt.
The Trump administration will succeed where President Ronald Reagan and other conservative leaders did not because we are listening to the families, business leaders and former students who have been utterly failed by the broken status quo.
The Schumer shutdown underlined just how little the Department of Education will be missed. As such, the Trump administration will work to end federal micromanagement of our schools and empower state and local leaders to create high-quality education programs that lead to a rewarding career. We know that the stakes could not be higher.
Linda McMahon currently serves as the 13th U.S. secretary of Education.