When President Donald Trump needed a fighter to lead his Department of Education, he picked a woman with a proven record of success. Linda McMahon is the perfect choice to fix a broken Department of Education that has failed our nation’s students for generations.
Under President Joe Biden’s administration, student achievement drastically declined nationwide. The National Center for Education Statistics recently published a report in showcasing the decline in student scores from 2019 to 2023. In mathematics, scores dropped by 18 points for fourth-grade students and by 27 points for eighth-grade students.
A recent report from NWEA revealed similar results. The the K-12 assessment and research organization’s report found that the “gap between pre-COVID and COVID test score averages widened in 2023–24 in nearly all grades, by an average of 36% in reading and 18% in math.”
Students will need approximately four to five months of learning in class to catch up to where they should be. The NWEA concluded that achievement gaps “in some cases, now surpass what we had previously deemed as the low point.”
These findings should come as no surprise. The Biden administration’s Education Department wasted an unprecedented amount of funding on woke priorities.
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In a December report, Parents Defending Education found that from 2021, the Department of Education spent more than $1 billion on grants for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
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Out of this exorbitant amount, nearly $490 million was designated specifically for race-based recruiting, training and hiring practices; $343 million was designated for DEI programming such as training and youth activism.
Some school districts received notably more funding than others, such as Montgomery County Schools in North Carolina receiving $21.5 million and Ypsilanti Community Schools in Michigan receiving $15.5 million.
The funds wasted on woke initiatives would have been much better spent improving the nation’s schools academically to ensure that students are better prepared for the real world.
McMahon is the perfect pick to turn this ship around. Whether leading a billion dollar company or serving in Trump’s first administration, McMahon succeeded where others would have likely failed.
McMahon, with her family, led World Wrestling Entertainment into the global behemoth it is today. She served as the chief executive officer of the WWE from 1997 to 2009 and president of the company from 1993 to 2000. Under her stewardship, the company grew from a worth of $1 million in 1982 to the multibillion dollar empire of today – now worth approximately $9.3 billion.
In his first administration, Trump nominated McMahon to lead the Small Business Administration. Under her leadership at the SBA, the economy grew with millions of new jobs added, unemployment reached a low of 3.5% and incomes increased for Americans across the board. McMahon took the time to tour the country and meet with small business owners to understand what assistance they needed to succeed.
The Washington Post reported that the SBA’s “core business is to provide federal guarantees so that banks can offer loans to small businesses that otherwise couldn’t get financing.” The Senate confirmed McMahon to the position in February 2017. By the beginning of 2018, the SBA was “on track to back more than $30 billion in loans which she says has helped create more than 650,000 jobs.”
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After succeeding in the position for more than two years, McMahon resigned in April 2019 to lead efforts to advance Trump’s policies outside the administration. She currently serves as chair of the America First Policy Institute, which has pushed to protect students from radical gender ideology in schools and to protect children from irreversible gender procedures.
McMahon has been a tremendous success in every position she has held, from helping to rebuild America’s economy to transforming a small sports venture into a global phenomenon.
The Department of Education crumbled under the Biden administration’s woke leadership. McMahon will have the opportunity to rebuild America’s dilapidated education system into a force that works for our nation’s students.
She is the perfect choice to body slam woke education.
Casey Ryan is a writer at Parents Defending Education.
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