Trump’s pick for Secretary of Education is Linda McMahon.  It is reported that she is worth $3.2 billion.

The Department of the Education has around 4,400 employees and a budget of $238 billion.  In 2022 the budget was $637.7 billion.

The Department of Education began operating on May 4, 1980, having been created after the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was split into the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services by the Department of Education Organization Act, which President Jimmy Carter signed into law on October 17, 1979. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been nominated to run the Department of Health and Human Services.

While Trump plans to eliminate the Department of Education and promotes the idea of moving more of its services back to the state and local governments the odds are at least part of what the DOE does will be rolled back into the Department of Health and Human Services. So it might be expected that Linda McMahon will work with RFK Jr. to prove to Congress the change is feasible.

Some media who remain at war with Trump have attacked Linda McMahon’s nomination as they have attacked most of his nominations, but she is smart, scrappy, and is probably more qualified for the position than Biden’s pick, Miguel Angel Cardona. Though on paper he does look like he would be suited with the skills so as to be more than just a diversity hire, he has not proven to be a very effective leader. Besides his failings being revealed by backlogs in applications and paperwork there have been student performance declines in basic mathematics and reading skills. Though many blame covid school closures or moving from in person learning to online learning, online learning should not have caused such a decline in reading and math test scores; perhaps if handled better. During the Biden/Cardona years, a severe teacher shortage has worsened, which may also have contributed to the decline in scores.  And as one person I talked to added, although parents can’t be fixed, they need to be brought better into the education system and especially when the system has to utilize online / home learning. Students and their parents should not be strangers to the administrators of a school or the teachers regardless of whether the students are being taught in a school or at home. While some parents and their children may be well known in the system, other parents and their children may mostly remain in the shadows. This is not good for learning, the child’s welfare, or  for school security. A school should be a local community project compared to a local village or town and not to a a high security prison run by the Federal Government. For learning and security a school should be a fun and friendly place and not a place under siege that both students and teachers are afraid to attend or in some worse case scenarios contribute to a person’s nervous breakdown.

While Trump wants to shut down the Department of Education there are problems in education that must be solved and which the Department of Education has not solved and may even have made worse. People become teachers to teach and not to have deal with the politics of bureaucracy and paperwork of the system.  Many who enter the teaching profession with a calling and joy very quickly find themselves in a nightmare they quickly want to leave and that is a problem.

As another person I spoke with said, that while it may be difficult to improve a parents involvement in their child’s education, the problem of the teacher shortage can be fixed and in truth it is one of the problems that must be fixed. The reasons a person might not choose teaching as a profession or they choose to leave the profession must be individually and aggressively handled.  The number of people in the profession must be increased.

As a teacher who goes into different schools, who I have spoken with in the past has told me, some of the schools are overwhelmed with the immigrant population. Where in the past the immigrant children have tended to be polite and wonderful, today, many of those students are militant, abusive, and a nightmare for the teachers to have to handle. In the past the immigrant students, who were limited in numbers, integrated into the system very well. That is currently not true and it is a problem that is not being dealt with.

Linda McMahon is a going to have a major job to deal with in running the Department of Education. Some of her decisions which are going to be necessary and can not be avoid forever are going to be controversial.   Hopefully she and Trump are fully aware of what they are walking into. Many might think that running the Department of Education will be like a stroll in the park but the job is going to be difficult.

I feel confident that Linda McMahon is up to the task of what is going to be a high pressure job as well as a very important job.

Linda McMahon is the co-founder of the WWE though currently she only owns a minority share in the company.

McMahon, along with her husband, Vince McMahon, founded the sports entertainment company Titan Sports, Inc. (later World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc.) where she worked as the president and later CEO from 1980 to 2009. During this time, the company grew from a regional business in the northeast to a large multinational corporation. Yes. She has wrestled in ring as well as the world of business.  Is she up to wrestling in the world of education?

McMahon was born Linda Marie Edwards in New Bern, North Carolina, to a Welsh-American family, the daughter of Evelyn and Henry Edwards. She was an only child and grew up as a “tomboy” playing basketball and baseball. Her parents were both employees at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, a military base. She grew up in a conservative Baptist family, but converted to Roman Catholicism in her later years.

Shortly after her high school graduation, Vince asked her to marry him. They had pretty much grown up together where Vince came from a somewhat dysfunctional home and she came from a more stable home. They married on August 26, 1966, when she was 17, and he was 21. She enrolled at East Carolina University in 1966, where she obtained a bachelor’s degree in French, and a certification to teach. From 1968 to 1971, Vince worked as a traveling cup salesman before joining his father’s company, the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF, now WWE). Linda finished college in three years so she could graduate with Vince. Their son Shane was born in 1970, followed by their daughter Stephanie in 1976.

Linda McMahon has dabbled in politics but lost both of her Senate races. At a more local level she has sat on a board of education.  Trump appointed her to run the Small Business Administration when he became President in 2016. This time, after his election in 2024, he has nominated her to be his/our Secretary of Education, a department he hopes to close down with its functions taken over by the states and local school districts and also most likely by the Health and Human Services Department.

So while Trump wants to shut down the department of the education and move its functions back to the local level, there are problems in education that must be solved.  Hopefully, Linda McMahon will work hard to help the states and the local school boards to solve the problems even as she might help work to integrate the Department of Education back into Health and Human Services.

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