U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon told PragerU CEO Marissa Streit that it is crucial for the Department of Education to be shut down, because “education will be better” when “it will be handled at the state level.”
“The Department of Education was established in 1980. Since then, we have spent over $3 trillion to educate our children and watched, every year, as scores and performance go down,” McMahon told Streit after being asked why she believes the agency should be dismantled.
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“We’re clearly not doing something right,” McMahon continued. “We have more administrators than we do students. The programs that have been put in place, I think, many times, with the best of intentions, like ‘No Child Left Behind,’ like ‘Race to the Top,’ like core curriculum.”
Explaining why President Donald Trump signed an executive order to begin shutting down several functions of the Department of Education, McMahon noted “a lot of those programs [that] have been put in place” are “managed from Washington DC, and that’s not where it needs to be.”
“The president believes, as do I, that the best education is that that’s closest to the student,” the Secretary of Education asserted. “Who better to monitor the students than parents, teachers, and administrators that are on the scene to know what the students in their area need?”
“That’s why the president certainly believes we need to take the bureaucracy out,” McMahon said, adding that programs like “Title One and like IDEA [Individuals with Disabilities Education Act], which is for our handicapped and disabled students,” should still be funded.
“That’s my goal. That’s what we’re looking to do,” the Secretary of Education said.
Streit then asked how the federal government will distribute the funds if the Department of Education is effectively shut down.
“Does it go through the Treasury, directly into the states? And then the states make these decisions? Are Americans going to save some money?” the PragerU CEO inquired.
Streit added that last year U.S. taxpayers “spent over $268 billion through the Department of Education.”
“Are Americans still going to spend $268 billion in education?” the PragerU CEO queried, to which McMahon replied, “On the operational side, we can wind down. But when we get to the policy side, Congress is going to have to vote to close the Department of Education.”
WATCH — Trump Announces Executive Order Beginning Dissolution of the Department of Education:
The Secretary of Education elaborated:
I think if that vote were taken today, we probably wouldn’t get the votes to close the Department of Education. I have to prove — in working with Congress and being transparent with them with what we are trying to do — to let them know that the best interest of students will be served in doing this a different way.
Now, to your specific question, some funds may still flow through another agency. For instance — and none of this has been decided — but let’s say the IDEA funds used to flow through what was then the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, which is now HHS. Some of those funds may flow through there, but of that number that you quoted, [$268 billion], almost half of that is in student loans.
McMahon added that student loans “don’t have any place in the Department of Education.”
“So, I’m working with Treasury, I’ve also talked with Department of Labor, some with the small Business Administration, as we look to how student loans can best be handled,” McMahon said, before suggesting they may be better suited for the private sector.
“But we have to work through that, and we’ll get there on that,” the Secretary of Education said, adding that she believes U.S. taxpayers will save “billions of dollars when we get all of this worked through.”
“And, at the same time, education will be better, because it will be handled at the state level,” McMahon said.
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
