These Activists Want to Dismantle Public Schools. Now They Run the Education Department.
S. E. Anderson
Education Secretary Linda McMahon has been clear about her desire to shut down the agency she runs. She’s laid off half the staff and joked about padlocking the door.
She calls it “the final mission.”
But the department is not behaving like an agency that is simply winding down. Even as McMahon has shrunk the Department of Education, she’s operated in what she calls “a parallel universe” to radically shift how children will learn for years to come. The department’s actions and policies reflect a disdain for public schools and a desire to dismantle that system in favor of a range of other options — private, Christian and virtual schools or homeschooling.
Over just eight months, department officials have opened a $500 million tap for charter schools, a huge outlay for an option that often draws children from traditional public schools. They have repeatedly urged states to spend federal money for poor and at-risk students at private schools and businesses. And they have threatened penalties for public schools that offer programs to address historic inequities for Black or Hispanic students.
McMahon has described her agency moving “at lightning rocket speed,” and the department’s actions in just one week in September reflect that urgency.
Over just eight months, department officials have opened a $500 million tap for charter schools, a huge outlay for an option that often draws children from traditional public schools.
The agency publicly blasted four school districts it views as insubordinate for refusing to adopt anti-trans policies and for not eliminating special programs for Black students. It created a pot of funding dedicated to what it calls “patriotic education,” which has been criticized for downplaying some of the country’s most troubling episodes, including slavery. And it formed a coalition with Turning Point USA, Hillsdale College, PragerU and dozens of other conservative groups to disseminate patriotic programming.
Officials at the Education Department declined to comment or answer questions from ProPublica for this story.
At times, McMahon has voiced support for public schools. But more often and more emphatically she has portrayed public schools as unsuccessful and unsafe — and has said she is determined to give parents other options.
To carry out her vision, McMahon has brought on at least 20 political appointees from ultraconservative think tanks and advocacy groups eager to de-emphasize public schools, which have educated students for roughly 200 years.
Among them is top adviser Lindsey Burke, a longtime policy director at The Heritage Foundation and the lead author of the education section in Project 2025’s controversial agenda for the trump administration.
In analyzing dozens of hours of audio and video footage of public and private speaking events for McMahon’s appointees, as well as their writings, ProPublica found that a recurring theme is the desire to enable more families to leave public schools. This includes expanding programs that provide payment — in the form of debit cards, which Burke has likened to an “Amazon gift card” — to parents to cobble together customized educational plans for their children. Instead of relying on public schools, parents would use their allotted tax dollars on a range of costs: private school tuition, online learning, tutors, transportation and music lessons.
More than 8 in 10 elementary and secondary students in the U.S. go to a traditional public school. But Burke expects that public schools will see dramatic enrollment declines fueled by both demographic and policy changes.
Addressing an interviewer in an April podcast, she noted: “We’re going to have a lot of empty school buildings.”
And in a speech last year she declared: “I'm optimistic that, you know, five years from now a majority of kids are going to be in a private school choice program.”
In a 2024 podcast, Noah Pollak, now a senior adviser in the Education Department, bemoaned what he sees as progressive control of schools, which he said has led to lessons he finds unacceptable, such as teaching fourth graders about systemic racism.
“And so the work that I do is trying to come up with creative policy ideas to stop that, to turn back the tide, to figure out ways that conservatives can protect these institutions or build new institutions,” said Pollak, who has been an adviser to conservative groups.
As tax dollars are reallocated from public school districts and families abandon those schools to learn at home or in private settings, the new department officials see little need for oversight. Instead, they would let the marketplace determine what’s working using tools such as Yelp-like reviews from parents. Burke has said she is against “any sort of regulation.”
President donald trump himself said in July that the federal government needs only to provide “a little tiny bit of supervision but very little, almost nothing,” over the nation’s education system except to make sure students speak English.
Advocates for public schools consider them fundamental to American democracy. Providing public schools is a requirement in every state constitution.
Families in small and rural communities tend to rely more heavily on public education. They are less likely than families in cities to have private and charter schools nearby. And unlike private schools, public school districts don’t charge tuition. Public schools enroll local students regardless of academic or physical ability, race, gender or family income; private schools can selectively admit students.
Karma Quick-Panwala, a leader at the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, which advocates for disabled students, said she wants to be optimistic. “But,” she added, “I’m very fearful that we are headed towards a less inclusive, less diverse and more segregated public school setting.”
Allison Rose Socol, a policy expert at EdTrust, an organization focusing on civil rights in schools, decried what she called the “demo crew” in McMahon’s office. Socol described McMahon’s push to help grow private school enrollment through taxpayer-funded vouchers and other means as a “great American heist” that will funnel money away from the public system.
“It’s a strategic theft of the future of our country, our kids and our democracy,” she said.
“Lead as Christians”
Attention on McMahon often focuses on her former role as CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment. It was no different on the day of her Senate confirmation hearing, when journalists and social media delighted in noting that seated behind her was her son-in-law, the retired wrestler known as Triple H.
Little attention was paid to the conservative education activists in the front row from Moms for Liberty, which has protested school curricula and orchestrated book bans nationwide; Defending Education (formerly Parents Defending Education), which has sued districts to fight what it calls liberal indoctrination; and the America First Policy Institute, co-founded by McMahon after the first trump administration.
Now two people who once served at Defending Education have been named to posts in the Education Department, and leaders from Moms for Liberty have joined McMahon for roundtables and other official events. In addition, at least nine people from the America First Policy Institute have been hired in the department.
AFPI’s sweeping education priorities include advocating for school vouchers and embedding biblical principles in schools. It released a policy paper in 2023, titled “Biblical Foundations,” that sets out the organization’s objective to end the separation of church and state and “plant Jesus in every space.”
The paper rejects the idea that society has a collective responsibility to educate all children equally and argues that “the Bible makes it clear that it is parents alone who shoulder the responsibility for their children.” It frames public schooling as failing, with low test scores and “far-left social experiments, such as gender fluidity.”
The first AFPI leader pictured in that report is McMahon.
AFPI and the other two nonprofit groups sprang up only after the 2020 election. Together they drew in tens of millions of dollars through a well-coordinated right-wing network that had spent decades advocating for school choice and injecting Christianity into schools.
Ultrawealthy supporters include right-wing billionaire Richard Uihlein, who, through a super PAC, gave $336,000 to Moms for Liberty’s super PAC from October 2023 through July 2024.
Defending Education and AFPI received backing from some of the same prominent conservative foundations and trusts, including ones linked to libertarian-minded billionaire Charles Koch and to conservative legal activist Leonard Leo, an architect of the effort to strip liberal influence from the courts, politics and schools.
Maurice T. Cunningham, a now-retired associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, studied the origins and connections of parents’ rights groups, finding in 2023 that the funders — a small set of billionaires and Christian nationalists — had similar goals.
The groups want “to undermine teachers unions, protect their wealthy donors from having to contribute their fair share in taxes to strengthen public schools, and provide profit opportunities through school privatization,” he concluded. The groups say they are merely trying to advocate for parents and for school choice. They didn’t discuss their relationship with donors when contacted by ProPublica.
These groups and their supporters now have access to the top levers of government, either through official roles in the agency or through the administration’s adoption of their views.
When the department created an “End DEI” portal to collect tips about diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in schools, it quoted Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice in the press release. She encouraged parents to “share the receipts of the betrayal that has happened in our public schools.” Moms for Liberty referred to the portal as the “culmination” of Justice’s work. (Federal judges ruled against some of the administration’s anti-DEI actions and the department took the controversial portal down in May.)
Asked what percentage of children she imagines should be in public schools going forward, Justice, who is now with The Heritage Foundation’s political advocacy arm, told ProPublica: “I hope zero. I hope to get to zero.”
She and others say most public schools don’t teach students to read, are dividing children over race and are secretly helping students to change genders — familiar claims that have been widely challenged by educators.
When trump signed an executive order in March to dismantle the Education Department, Justice sat in the first row, as she had at McMahon’s confirmation hearing. The president praised her, along with various governors and lawmakers. “She’s been a hard worker,” he said.
Asked what percentage of children she imagines should be in public schools going forward, Justice told ProPublica: “I hope zero. I hope to get to zero.”
Defending Education’s Nicole Neily, who was also at McMahon’s confirmation, stood next to McMahon when the secretary announced an investigation into the Maine Department of Education for keeping records from parents about student gender identity plans. Defending Education has filed civil rights complaints against colleges and school districts and has been successful in having its causes taken up by the trump administration.
In an email, Neily told ProPublica she is proud of the work that Defending Education has done to challenge schools that have supported DEI in their curricula and have allowed students to hide their gender identity from parents. She singled out teacher unions and “radical education activists” while blaming drops in student achievement on “the education-industrial complex.”
“The sooner this stranglehold is broken, the better,” she wrote.
McMahon’s tenure also has been marked by an embrace of religion in schools. She signaled that priority when she appointed Meg Kilgannon to a top post in her office.
Kilgannon had worked in the department as director of a faith initiative during the first trump term and once was part of the Family Research Council, an evangelical think tank that opposes abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.
She has encouraged conservative Christians to become involved in what she’s described as “a spiritual war” over children and what they’re being taught in public schools.
“This is why we have to lead as Christians, because what the left is doing is a top-down imposition of an agenda, of a Marxist and anti-God and anti-family agenda,” Kilgannon said in a 2023 summit on America’s schools.
Reached by phone, Kilgannon told ProPublica, “I have no comment,” and hung up.
Overhauling “Government Schools”
Betsy DeVos, the Michigan billionaire who was education secretary in trump’s first term, cheered on July 4 this year when Congress instituted America’s first federal voucher program. It came in the form of a generous tax credit program to encourage voucher expansion at the state level. Families can start accessing the aid beginning Jan. 1, 2027.
DeVos once said she wanted “to advance God’s kingdom” through vouchers for religious schools and has funneled vast amounts of her family fortune into advocating for school choice. She called the passage of the federal measure “the turning point in ending the one-size-fits-all government school monopoly.”
An article in The Federalist, a conservative publication, boiled down the implications into one headline: “How trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill Will Help Kids Escape Failing Government Schools.”
But school choice isn’t the only tool that trump’s education leaders are using to target public schools. McMahon has gutted the Education Department’s civil rights division, where lawyers and other federal employees work to ensure all students can access public school, free from discrimination.
The administration rolled back protections for LGBTQ+ students and students of color, prioritized investigating discrimination against white and Jewish students, and launched aggressive investigations of states and districts that it says refused to stop accommodating transgender students.
It has rescinded official guidance that said schools had to provide language help and other services for students who are learning English, contradicting long-established federal law.
And trump officials have repeatedly cast public schools as dangerous even as the agency canceled about $1 billion in training grants for more school mental health professionals — money that had been authorized by Congress to help prevent school shootings. The administration now says it plans to resume paying out a fraction of that funding, which would be used for school psychologists.
Over and over, the department has used the threat of pulling federal funding to force compliance with new directives and rapid shifts in policy. The department, for instance, threatened to withhold money from schools that did not verify they were ending diversity initiatives, which were designed to address inequitable treatment of Black, Native and Latino students.
In August, the department announced it was withholding millions of dollars in grants from five northern Virginia school districts that had refused the department’s demands to bar transgender students from using restrooms and locker rooms that aligned with their gender identity. The districts argued that complying would mean defying Virginia law and a 2020 federal appeals court ruling.
Nevertheless, the Education Department told the districts that until they acquiesced to the agency’s bathroom rules they would have to pay expenses up front and request reimbursement. McMahon wrote to districts that “Lindsey Burke is available to answer any questions.”
The Fairfax County Public Schools sued and in a legal filing said it faced losing $167 million this school year, money that it was relying on to provide meals to students, support programs for children with disabilities, help English-language learners and enhance teacher training. The federal department has argued that it has discretion to withhold funding and admonished the district for taking the agency to court.
trump officials have repeatedly cast public schools as dangerous even as the agency cancelled training grants for more school mental health professionals — money that had been authorized by Congress to help prevent school shootings.
In this atmosphere, public school advocates are particularly concerned about what will happen to funding for Title I grants, which is the federal government’s largest program for schools and is aimed at helping students from low-income families. In early September, House Republicans proposed slashing more than $5 billion from the $18.4 billion earmarked for Title I, putting at risk reading and math teachers, tutors and classroom technology.
At the same time, under McMahon, the Education Department is trying to redefine how states and districts can spend the money.
In three guidance letters so far this year, the agency encouraged states to divert some Title I money away from public school districts. One suggested paying for outside services, such as privatized tutoring. Another urged states to use Title I money to benefit low-achieving students who live within the boundaries of a high-poverty public school but attend private schools.
McMahon is prepared to loosen even more rules on the money. The federal dollars currently are distributed to districts using a formula. Project 2025 calls for Title I to be delivered to states as block grants, or chunks of money with few restrictions. McMahon has encouraged states to ask her to waive rules on spending the money.
Critics of this approach fear that Title I money could eventually be used in ways that undermine public schools — on private school vouchers, for example.
Public school advocates like William Phillis, a former official at the Ohio Department of Education, fear the change would devastate public schools.
“I just know any block grant or any funding that would be left up to state officials on Title I money would be misappropriated in terms of the intent,” Phillis said. “Block grants to Ohio would go to the private sector.”
A spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce did not respond to requests for comment.
Rainey Briggs, chief of operations for Des Moines Public Schools in Iowa, said he supports parental choice but worries that public schools will suffer financially and will not have the resources to stay up to date.
And he fears that right-wing narratives around public schools, the distrust and lack of support for highly trained district leaders — whether from some parents or politicians — could lead accomplished educators to walk away.
“Public education is irreplaceable,” he said, citing its commitment to serve every child regardless of their background or circumstance.
Those influencing trump’s education agenda disagree.
“If America’s public schools cease to exist tomorrow, America would be a better place,” Justice told ProPublica. ///
No Education Department? No Problem, trump’s Education Secretary Says.
The shutdown means there is, essentially, no Education Department. The latest round of layoffs would leave few workers to enforce special education and civil rights laws.
By Sarah Mervosh and Michael C. Bender
What could it look like if President trump succeeds in his promise to shut down the U.S. Department of Education?
The last three weeks offer something of a glimpse.
So far this month, the Education Department has stopped most of its work during the government shutdown, and the trump administration has laid off more than 460 employees, cutting deeper into an agency that had already laid off half of its work force in March.
The new layoffs, if they survive a legal challenge, would functionally wipe out the offices that handle two of the agency’s core functions: dispersing federal money to states and school districts, and enforcing federal special education and civil rights laws. In March, the layoffs eliminated the agency’s research arm dedicated to tracking U.S. student achievement, which for many students is at three-decade lows.
Mr. trump’s education secretary, Linda McMahon, has argued that the latest developments only prove that the Education Department is unnecessary and should be shut down.
“Millions of American students are still going to school, teachers are getting paid, and schools are operating as normal,” Ms. McMahon posted on social media last week. “It confirms what the President has said: the federal Department of Education is unnecessary, and we should return education to the states.”
The federal government indeed plays a small role in the day-to-day operations of schools, which are locally run and paid for mostly with state and local dollars. But it is responsible for sending out billions of dollars a year in funding for schools, about 10 percent of all public school funding. And it plays a key role in enforcing federal law in schools and universities.
The latest layoffs would make it nearly impossible for the Department of Education to fulfill those obligations, current and former employees said, potentially bringing the trump administration one step closer to its goal of shutting down the department.
Here is what has been cut and what might be restored.
Layoffs wiped out staff who enforced federal law for students with disabilities.
An exact picture of who remains at the Department of Education is unclear, complicated in part by the government shutdown. The trump administration has declined to discuss the cuts in detail.
But interviews and internal government data suggest that the layoffs hit two key departments that oversee the rights of students with disabilities, who make up 15 percent of the public school population.
Nearly everyone was laid off at the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, which oversees $15 billion a year in funding for students with disabilities and enforces compliance with the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act.
Individual students and families can also file complaints through the Office for Civil Rights, which investigates discrimination. Historically, the majority of cases filed with the department involved students with disabilities.
At the beginning of the year, there were civil rights lawyers spread across 12 regional offices. After the firings this month, the office’s enforcement staff appeared to be all but decimated in the remaining five regional offices, according to data compiled by the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, a union that represents workers in the Education Department.
Though federal money for students with disabilities has already gone out for this school year, experts questioned what enforcement would look like if the cuts were to hold.
“It’s a thwarting of federal law and the requirements that have been enacted by Congress over many decades,” said Margaret Spellings, an education secretary under President George W. Bush.
Ms. McMahon has spoken publicly about moving some of the department’s responsibilities for students with disabilities to other departments, including Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice. Legal experts have said such changes that would require approval from Congress.
Sydney Rendel, a lawyer in Florida who works with families of students with disabilities, said she had already stopped recommending that families file cases with the Office of Civil Rights, after she stopped hearing from lawyers there in the last few months.
“Every month I email them on the same date: Any updates?” said Ms. Rendel, who said she had a pending case involving a student with diabetes who she said did not receive proper support at school.
Ms. Rendel has worked on other cases that she said could have made good candidates for federal investigation, such as an 8-year-old with autism whose diapers were not being changed throughout the school day. “These are families who feel like they have no voice and no recourse,” she said. “It’s almost like the law exists, but there is nobody to really enforce it.”
Employees who investigate racial bias and sex discrimination were also cut.
In addition to disability discrimination, the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights enforces federal laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, sex, age and national origin in schools and universities.
The office received a record 22,687 complaints last year, an increase of more than 200 percent from five years earlier.
“There are categorically not enough people to do the work that Congress charges the office to do,” said Catherine E. Lhamon, a former assistant secretary for civil rights under the Obama and Biden administrations. When she left in January, she said the office had about 600 employees, with an average caseload of about 50.
After the trump administration slashed the office in March, investigators were left with an average caseload of 168 open investigations, “an unprecedented and unmanageable number,” according to a letter Senate Democrats sent to the trump administration on Monday.
The latest layoffs would further weaken the office’s capacity and the scope of cases it can handle. Already, the office has been criticized for narrowly focusing on a set of issues important to Mr. trump’s political agenda, including transgender bathroom policies that the administration says violate the rights of girls, and racial equity policies that it says are illegal.
“I think what the trump administration is communicating, as clearly as it is possible to communicate, is they do not care about civil rights and they have abandoned our longstanding guarantees of equal opportunity for all in schools,” Ms. Lhamon said.
Education Department officials did not respond to a request for comment.
But in her social media post, Ms. McMahon argued that the department “has taken additional steps to better reach American students and families and root out the education bureaucracy that has burdened states and educators with unnecessary oversight.”
She added that education funding had not been affected, “including funding for special education.”
Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for remaking the federal government, suggests moving civil rights investigations to the Justice Department, a move that the layoffs may be fast-tracking.
Kenneth L. Marcus, who oversaw the civil rights office during Mr. trump’s first term, said that cutting so many civil rights investigators from the Education Department “really only makes sense if one is looking at a broader picture that involves increases in work done by other agencies.”
Money for financial aid and low-income schools is flowing, for now.
The office of Federal Student Aid, which handles loans for college students, was largely unaffected by the most recent round of layoffs.
Most student loan money should continue to flow while the government is shut down, said Mark Kantrowitz, a federal student aid expert.
Other federal funding for school districts, including $18 billion to support the education of low-income students, has already gone out for this school year.
But the office that handles that money and other federal funding for districts was also hit with widespread layoffs, raising questions about the government’s ability to send money for next school year. The next round of federal dollars will be due July 1.
A smaller number of school districts could be affected sooner. About 1,000 districts receive money more regularly through the Impact Aid Program, which since 1950 has reimbursed school districts for lost revenue in property taxes associated with federal land, such as Native American reservations and military bases.
“With no staff, we are really unsure how the department plans on releasing those funds,” said Cherise Imai, executive director of the National Association of Federally Impacted Schools.
The layoffs are being challenged in court.
A federal judge has temporarily blocked the layoffs.
It’s possible the trump administration could bring back some laid-off employees after the government shutdown ends, an outcome some expect considering that teams dedicated to even programs that Mr. trump supports, such as charter schools, were laid off.
But the trump administration could also fight for the layoffs, as it successfully did earlier this year at the Supreme Court.
Mr. trump has embraced the longstanding conservative idea that the Department of Education adds bureaucracy without lifting the outcomes of students. He has proposed cutting its budget by 15 percent for next year. ///
s. e. anderson
author of The Black Holocaust for Beginners
www.blackeducator.org
"If WORK was good for you, the rich would leave none for the poor." (Haiti)
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