March 4 (UPI) — The Department of Education must focus on a “positive vision” to improve the nation’s educational outcomes, Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced on Tuesday.
“Since its establishment in 1980, taxpayers have entrusted the department with over $1 trillion, yet student outcomes have consistently languished,” McMahon said in a prepared speech posted on the Education Department’s website.
“Millions of young Americans are trapped in failing schools, subjected to radical anti-American ideology or saddled with college debt for a degree that has not provided a meaningful return on their investment,” McMahon said.
“Teachers are leaving the profession in droves after just a few years and citing red tape as one of their primary reasons,” she added.
McMahon said she accepted the role and responsibility of leading the Department of Education and those who work in it to support the nation’s more than 100 million grade school and college students.
Those students “are counting on their education to create opportunity and prepare them for a rewarding career,” McMahon said. “I want to do right by both.”
She said President Donald Trump tasked her with sending education back to the states to empower the nation’s parents to enable their children to receive an excellent education.
“American education can be the greatest in the world,” McMahon said. “It ought not be corrupted by political ideologies, special interests and unjust discrimination. Parents, teachers and students alike deserve better.”
She said Trump has heralded a new era of accountability within the federal government by eliminating waste, red tape and harmful programs.
“The Department of Education’s role in this new era of accountability is to restore the rightful role of state oversight in education and to end the overreach from Washington,” McMahon said.
She said the Education Department, Congress and other federal agencies will partner to determine the best path forward while eliminating unnecessary bureaucratic obstacles so that colleges, grade schools, students and teachers can innovate and improve the quality of education in the United States.
The educational innovation will start with a review of the nation’s educational programs to eliminate “bureaucratic bloat,” which McMahon called the Education Department’s “momentous final mission.”
“Disruption leads to innovation and gets results,” McMahon said. “We must start thinking about our final mission at the department as an overhaul – a last chance to restore the culture of liberty and excellence that made American education great.”
She said the Education Department will make parents the “primary decision-makers” in education while focusing education on match, reading, science and history instead of divisive DEI programs and gender ideology.
The Education Department also will help make post-secondary education a pathway to rewarding careers that are aligned with the needs of the nation’s workforce.
“An effective transfer of education oversight to the states will mean more autonomy for local communities,” McMahon said. “Teachers, too, will benefit from less micromanagement in the classroom [while] enabling them to get back to basics.”
McMahon said the elimination of bureaucracy “should free us, not limit us, in our pursuit of these goals.”
“This is our opportunity to perform one final, unforgettable public service to future generations of students,” she said.
McMahon, 76, was sworn in Tuesday as the Education Department’s secretary after the Senate confirmed her nomination on Monday.
She might be the nation’s last Education secretary.
Trump wants to abolish the department and said it has failed in its mission by overseeing years of declining educational outcomes while the nation ranks 40th in the world in educational excellence despite spending more per pupil than any other nation.
