Confirmed by the Senate late Monday in a 51 to 45 party-line vote, McMahon steps into the education department as President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency continues its aggressive push to make the government’s even smaller. 

“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 wrote in a Monday night email to agency staff, shared with ����Ӱ��. She encouraged employees to be “enthusiastic” about what’s to come.

Last week, however, they received letters encouraging them to by midnight Monday in advance of “large-scale reductions in force.” In addition to outlining how she’ll execute that goal by , McMahon has until mid-April to submit blueprints for how she’d run a leaner department. Those orders come on top of steps DOGE has already taken to slash spending, and eradicate programs that don’t fit the president’s agenda. A challenging those actions are working their way through the federal courts.

It goes without saying that it’s a beginning unprecedented in the 45-year history of the department.

“Usually, administrations wait until they have agency heads in place, and those agency heads roll out new priorities or initiatives,” said Julia Martin, director of policy and government affairs with The Bruman Group, a Washington law firm. Now, the script is reversed, due to a slow confirmation process and “rapid-fire, government-wide” efforts by DOGE to clean house. “We’ll see what, if anything, changes when she’s officially in office.”

‘Grown-ups in the building’

Some advocates say whatever happens with McMahon at the helm is bound to be an improvement after a month of DOGE’s rushed and often chaotic efforts to downsize and reshape the agency.

“I think we’ll all feel a little bit better knowing that there are some grown-ups in the building,” said Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union, an advocacy group. 

Many DOGE staffers assembled by billionaire Elon Musk are engineers with little, if any, government experience. Rodrigues hopes the Senate follows up quickly to confirm nominees with education leadership experience, including Penny Schwinn, former Tennessee education chief, as deputy secretary, and Kristen Baesler, North Dakota superintendent, as assistant secretary in charge of K-12 education. 

“I don’t think it’s great to have 19-year-old kids just looking for big pots of money via AI and slashing whatever they see indiscriminately,” she said.

But many conservatives think an overhaul of the bureaucracy is long overdue. 

“National test scores continue to prove our education system is in an undeclared state of emergency,” said Tommy Schultz, CEO of the American Federation for Children, which supports private school choice. 

Released in January, the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress results showed that students continue to lose ground in reading. Eighth grade results in math were flat, and while fourth graders saw some gains in the subject, they were driven by the highest-performing students.

He called McMahon’s confirmation “the beginning of the end” for the federal government’s role in education.

“Something has to change,” he said. “As Ms. McMahon affirmed, she and President Trump are strong supporters of school choice and returning control of education to the states and families.” 

In her Monday email to department staff, McMahon said the overhaul was necessary to fix a an education system “not working as intended.”

“Since its establishment in 1980, taxpayers have entrusted the department with over $1 trillion, yet student outcomes have consistently languished,” she wrote. “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. Teachers are leaving the profession in droves after just a few years—and citing red tape as one of their primary reasons.”

But shuttering the department would take time if it happens at all. Experts say it’s doubtful the president could muster the 60 votes in the Senate needed to abolish the agency — every Republican and seven Democrats. A shows nearly two thirds of Americans are opposed to eliminating the department. 

In the meantime, McMahon, former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, is likely to face tough questions from Democrats, education leaders and advocates about how she’d maintain core education functions required by law, whether they’re carried out by the department or not. 

Those include distributing funding for high-poverty schools and protecting students’ civil rights. that other agencies lack the expertise to administer programs for students with disabilities and would be less responsive to civil rights complaints. 

“I’ve had concerns from the outset about whether Ms. McMahon has the experience we should expect from an education secretary, and I’m sorry to say my concerns have not been alleviated,” Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington said ahead of the vote.

But Democrats aren’t the only ones questioning whether the department should close completely. Even Trump, who has called the department a “con job,” will need officials with education expertise to carry out some of his priorities.

The department has wasted no time of districts implementing racial diversity initiatives, or allowing transgender students to compete in sports or use bathrooms consistent with their gender identity. 

On Monday, the department’s Office for Civil Rights announced into the Tumwater School District in Washington state, prompted by a 15-year-old female basketball player who complained that the district allowed a transgender student to play on her team. 

“There absolutely is a role for the Department of Education, and the Office for Civil Rights specifically, to right the ship, to ensure that people’s civil rights are being protected,” said Tiffany Justice, co-founder of the conservative group Moms for Liberty. 

She trusts McMahon not to “just parcel things out to other departments that will not be able to handle them.” And she considers McMahon’s background a complement to DOGE’s tech expertise.

“Linda is a businessperson,” Justice said. “Taking a business lens to the way that the government is working … is very important.”

But even some conservatives are calling out for greater accountability of DOGE’s work.

Nat Malkus, deputy director of education policy at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, found that DOGE dramatically overestimated how much money it’s been able to save taxpayers. 

While the department announced it had canceled nearly $900 million in research contracts, showed the amount was actually less than $600 million. Factoring in funds already spent reduced the figure even more. 

DOGE’s “sloppy work,” he wrote, “should give pause to even its most sympathetic defenders.” 

According to the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 2,800 education department workers, nearly 150 staff members had either been terminated or put on paid leave as of last week. That number, however, doesn’t include fired managers or supervisors, or those who accepted the most recent buyout, according to the union.

The union isn’t advising employees whether to accept a lump sum in exchange for resigning, but noted that the letter only offers up to $25,000.

“Many employees would get less than that,” a spokesman said. Those who end up returning to the department within five years would also have to pay back the gross amount even after paying taxes on it, the spokesman said. 

‘Cost-cutting exercise’

The on staff reductions told officials to focus on cutting “functions not mandated by statute or regulation.” 

The same day, Trump also to create a new system for recording every contract, grant and loan and for employees to justify each payment. The purpose, the order says, is to “ensure government spending is transparent and government employees are accountable to the American public.”

Experts say databases like and already serve that purpose. Martin, with Bruman, said the order could be another attempt to justify further cuts based on the descriptions of the expenses.  

The executive order would also require education staff to justify any “non-essential” travel, which Martin said could hinder officials’ ability to visit classrooms and interact with state and local leaders.

“Can they no longer go see programs in action or get feedback from the field?” she asked. “Those are the kind of things that improve program functionality and efficiency — and arguably, reduce government waste.”

Good morning!

RT if you’re ready to Make Education Great Again

— ED Press Secretary (@EDPressSec)

But one school finance expert thinks it’s not a bad idea.

Rebecca Sibilia, executive director of EdFund, a research organization that focuses on school finance, said such a system could give McMahon a head start on understanding the department’s many programs and would be preferable to the “DOGE circus we’ve been watching thus far.”

WASHINGTON — The only reason John Arthur is able to be a public school teacher is because his wife makes much more money than he does.

Arthur —  the 2021 Utah Teacher of the Year  — testified on Thursday at a hearing in the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on the challenges facing public school teachers.

Arthur, who is also a member of the National Education Association and holds National Board Certification, pointed to pay as the main reason for both teachers leaving the profession and parents not wanting their children to become teachers.

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“The No. 1 solution to addressing the issues we face must be increasing teachers’ salaries,” said Arthur, who teaches at Meadowlark Elementary School in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Gemayel Keyes, a teacher at Gilbert Spruance Elementary School in Philadelphia, told the committee that even as an educator, he still has an additional part-time job.

The special education teacher spent most of his career in education as a paraprofessional. At the time he moved into that role, the starting annual salary was $16,000 and the maximum was $30,000.

“It’s still pretty much the same,” he said.

Minimum teacher salary 

Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, in March 2023 that would set an of $60,000 for public elementary and secondary school teachers.

“We understand that the children, young people of this country, are our future and there is, in fact … nothing more important that we can do to provide a quality education to all of our young people, and yet, for decades, public school teachers have been overworked, underpaid, understaffed, and maybe most importantly, underappreciated,” Sanders said in his opening remarks.

“Compared to many other occupations, our public school teachers are more likely to experience high levels of anxiety, stress and burnout, which was only exacerbated by the pandemic,” he said.

Sanders said 44% of public school teachers are quitting their profession within five years, citing “the extremely low pay teachers receive” as one of the primary reasons for a massive U.S. teacher shortage.

For the 2023-24 school year, a whopping 86% of K-12 public schools in the country documented challenges in hiring teachers, according to an October report from the .

Maryland sets $60,000 minimum  

But a minimum annual teacher salary of $60,000 is not far off for every state.

In Maryland, the raises the starting salary for teachers to $60,000 a year by July 2026.

William E. Kirwan, vice chair of Maryland’s Accountability and Implementation Board, said the multi-year comprehensive plan, passed in 2021 in the Maryland General Assembly, “addresses all aspects of children’s education from birth to high school completion, including most especially, the recruitment, retention and compensation of high quality teachers.”

Kirwan said the “Blueprint’s principle for teacher compensation is that, as professionals, teachers should be compensated at the same level as other professionals requiring similar levels of education, such as architects and CPAs.”

An “allocation issue”  

Sen. Bill Cassidy, ranking member of the committee, dubbed Democrats’ solution of creating a federal minimum salary for teachers as a “laudable goal.”

But he noted that “the federal government dictating how states spend their money does not address the root cause of why teachers are struggling to teach in the classroom.”

“More mandates and funding cannot be the only answer we come up with. We must examine broken policies that got us here and find solutions to improve,” the Louisiana Republican said.

Nicole Neily, president and founder of Parents Defending Education, a parents’ rights group, argued that “schools don’t have a resource issue” but rather an “allocation issue.”

“There’s a saying: ‘Don’t tell me where your priorities are, show me where you spend your money, and I’ll tell you what they are.’ Education leaders routinely choose to spend money on programs and personnel that don’t directly benefit students,” said Neily.

Neily pointed to a 2021 report from the , which found that “standardized test results show that achievement gaps are growing wider over time in districts with (chief diversity officers).” Such staff members commonly encourage efforts at diversity, equity and inclusion in schools.

Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said “higher pay does not ease the burden we place on teachers or add hours to their day.”

“By all means, raise teacher pay, but do not assume that it will solve teacher shortages or keep good teachers in the classroom. Poor training, deteriorating classroom conditions, shoddy curriculum and spiraling demands have made an already challenging job nearly impossible to do well and sustainably,” he added.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. North Dakota Monitor maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Amy Dalrymple for questions: info@northdakotamonitor.com. Follow North Dakota Monitor on and .

Now that the Democrats will stay in control of the Senate next year, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a far-left independent, has officially announced his intention to chair the education committee. According to a statement from his office, he’ll likely focus more on higher education and health care issues than K-12.

Meanwhile, conservative Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky — in line to be the top Republican on the committee — that he will instead take the role of ranking member on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. That leaves Louisiana Sen. Dr. Bill Cassidy as the next Republican in line for the job. Cassidy, an advocate for , is also considering a

The progessive believes in free college for all and wants to triple funding for poor schools.

The conservative once campaigned to abolish the U.S. Department of Education.

One is the son of a former Libertarian Party candidate for president and sounds a consistent drumbeat on schools: The federal government should stay out.

The other, ranked by one scorecard, is a self-described democratic socialist known for pushing just one education cut — to charter schools.

But in the latest example of the nation’s topsy-turvy politics, Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders and Kentucky Republican Rand Paul will soon be first in line to run the Senate education committee.

“They’re a heck of an odd couple,” said Rick Hess, a senior fellow and director of education policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

“Alpha and omega,” quipped Jack Jennings, a retired education policy expert and former Democratic staffer for the House.

Depending on the outcome of this week’s election, the two firebrands are the top contenders to be chair and ranking member of the Senate HELP Committee, which also oversees health, labor and pension issues. While it may seem increasingly inaptly named in an era of gridlock and rabid partisanship, the committee wields considerable power, overseeing a $235 billion education budget and issues from special education to preventing sexual harassment and discrimination in schools.

With Republicans already proposing to restrict lessons on gender identity and sexual orientation and the Biden administration engulfed in a to wipe out billions of dollars in student loan debt, there’s plenty of potential for the two to clash. Neither senator’s office responded to requests for comment.

The succession battle is triggered by the expected transition of longtime chair Patty Murray of Washington to a leadership position on the appropriations committee — that is, if she wins  against a suddenly formidable challenger—  and the retirement of ranking member Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina.

From COVID closures to parent protests at school board meetings, the committee has seen its share of hot-button topics over the past two years. While hearings have been clearly partisan, Murray and Burr have kept the tone fairly civil.

Bethany Little, principal at EducationCounsel, a consulting firm, sees it as the end of an era in which members wanted “to get things done.” That’s how it was, she said, when she worked for the committee under former Democratic chairs Edward Kennedy and Tom Harkin. 

“There is a shift in the posture of the people taking charge and their interest in making a deal and being able to find middle ground,” she said.

The ascendency of Sanders/Paul — or Paul/Sanders — is by no means assured. Earlier this year, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said he expects Paul to run the committee if the GOP flips the Senate. But first, Paul has to defend his seat in Congress, which he’s expected to do in solidly Republican Kentucky. Sanders, for his part, would have to give up chairmanship of the budget committee. 

Some say that’s a switch he’d be likely to make. 

The senator “got his green money,” Hess said, referring to climate-related provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act. But for free preschool and community college, part of the original version of that bill, fell by the wayside. 

Sanders recently said he’d like to revive efforts to pass what he has described as “transformational” programs for families, such as the larger child tax credit that was part of the American Rescue Plan. But he never wanted to stop at two years of free community college. He wants to be free and for the federal government to cancel all student debt.

As an advocate for , the chairmanship would also allow him to lead the panel that oversees the government’s various health-related agencies.

Health care issues might also be a reason why Paul, an eye surgeon, would savor the chance to chair the committee. Paul is known for his regular with medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci over COVID policies and vaccines. Paul wants to investigate allegations that tie Fauci to the virus’s creation by funding research in China. While Fauci categorically denies the allegations, an Oct. 20 Paul fundraising email declares, “If you help me win, I promise to subpoena every last document of Dr. Fauci’s unprecedented coverup.”

“He’s so off the rails on just about everything,” said Charles Barone, a former Democratic staffer in the Senate and now vice president of K-12 policy with Democrats for Education Reform, a think tank. “His level of combativeness and his general aversion to anything bipartisan is problematic.”

Paul was the among the handful of Republicans to the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015. Aside from wanting to put Education Secretary Miguel Cardona out of a job, he also proposes sending federal directly to parents.

Jennings said moderate Republicans on the committee — Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah — could mitigate some of Paul’s  rhetoric.

But as for the Vermont senator, he said, “I don’t think there’s any restraint on Sanders. He speaks his mind.”

As Election Day nears, predictions on whether Democrats will hold onto the Senate change almost by the hour. According to election forecaster FiveThirtyEight, they are now in a with Republicans, who in the polls.

Regardless of who leads the committee, as long as one party holds a slim majority, there’s little chance members would advance bipartisan bills, said Michelle Dimino, deputy director of education for Third Way, a center-left think tank. 

“It’s more likely to stay in the realm of hearings and investigations,” she said. 

Hess said he could see Republicans questioning how districts are spending COVID relief money, and Jennings added that they would likely try to stop the Biden administration’s move to cancel student debt.

“There’s enough for them to muck around in,” Jennings said.

Possible common ground

Despite their differences, the two iconoclasts have one thing in common: They are both known for bucking their own parties — a trait that could make them occasional allies. One issue where the pair could find common ground is testing and accountability. the federal requirements to assess students annually as “Washington’s intrusion into the classroom,” and Sanders is an of standardized testing.

They might also find agreement on protecting student privacy. Paul has sought to roll back government surveillance programs, and Sanders is “wary about big tech collecting data” on students, said Lindsay Fryer, senior vice president of Penn Hill Group, an education lobbying firm.

Paul is also up for the top Republican seat on the homeland security committee and has said he doesn’t plan to make until after the election. That committee the , which would still give Paul a chance to put his stamp on expanding school choice.

Republicans want to see the program, which serves about 1,800 students, have “stable financial footing,” said Lindsey Burke, director of the Center for Education Policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation. Right now, she said, it exists “at the whim of Congress.”

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten is among those who probably hopes he’ll choose homeland security. She told ����Ӱ�� that the prospect of him leading the education committee “absolutely” keeps her up at night as she travels the country for Democratic candidates.

Given how far apart the parties are on education, leaders might have no problem with Paul and Sanders promoting their out-of-the-mainstream ideas.

But the opposite could also be true. 

Hess said Republicans could regret giving more attention to the idea of eliminating the education department. Likewise, he said, the “Democrats might be better off if Sanders doesn’t have such a visible, public platform to talk about giving money away.”

����Ӱ��’s senior reporter Jo Napolitano contributed to this report.

Lhamon, who faced steep opposition from Republicans, will lead the Education Department office in charge of enforcing federal civil rights laws in schools, including rules that prohibit discrimination based on race and sex. She secured the post after a combative confirmation hearing in July, followed by a partisan 11-11 vote a month later in which members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee deadlocked on her nomination. Lawmakers voted earlier this month to discharge her nomination from committee and bring it before the full Senate. 

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Harris’s vote, which broke a 50-50 tie, followed an effort by Republican lawmakers to block her return to a position she held from 2013 to 2017. She was unanimously confirmed in 2013, but became a lightning rod in several key education debates, including one that looked to hold K-12 schools and universities more accountable for sexual misconduct on campus. 

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said that Lhamon’s confirmation will help ensure that schools are “fairer and more just.”

“She will lead the Department’s vital efforts to ensure our schools and college campuses are free from discrimination on the basis of race, sex and disability and to protect all students’ rights in education,” Cardona said in a media release. “Catherine is one of the strongest civil rights leaders in America and has a robust record of fighting for communities that are historically and presently underserved.” 

In 2011, before Lhamon became assistant secretary, the Obama administration released a that instructed educators to investigate sexual misconduct allegations “regardless of where the conduct occurred,” and to use a less-strict “preponderance of the evidence” standard when determining guilt. Eight months into her tenure under former President Trump, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, whose confirmation was secured by a tie-breaking vote by Vice President Mike Pence, rescinded the guidance and replaced it with new Title IX regulations in 2020. The Biden administration the Obama-era guidance.

Civil rights groups have praised Lhamon as a champion for student equity, but her conservative critics have accused her of being an overzealous bureaucrat who went beyond her legal authority during her previous stint on the job. 

In 2014, the civil rights office to warn school districts that discipline policies could constitute “unlawful discrimination” if they didn’t mention race but had a “disproportionate and unjustified effect on students of a particular race.” In June, the to revisit how the Education Department can ensure racial equity in school discipline. 

While Democrats control the White House and both houses of Congress, Lhamon will be taking up her job at a time when battles over race and gender in schools have become even more divisive, as seen in several states recently moving to bar transgender students from playing sports.