Education Secretary Linda McMahon has officially been on the job for a month and a half—and so far, many educators say they’re not impressed with her performance.
McMahon, who served in President Donald Trump’s first term as the head of the Small Business Administration and is the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, has little experience in education. She graduated from college with a French degree and a teaching certificate, but never taught. She served a yearlong stint on Connecticut’s state school board more than a decade ago and has been a longtime trustee of Sacred Heart University, a private religious school in Connecticut.
McMahon was tasked by Trump with dismantling the Education Department and has already begun efforts to do so by reducing the workforce by nearly half. But some educators say they worry she doesn’t have the practical experience to lead the agency and are disappointed with the policy changes she’s spearheaded so far.
Two recent gaffes haven’t helped that perception. Earlier this month, McMahon mistakenly referred to artificial intelligence (AI) as A1, the same name as the steak sauce brand, at an appearance at the ASU+GSV conference in San Diego. And last month, during an interview with Fox News, she couldn’t tell the interviewer what IDEA, the acronym for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the federal special education law, stood for.
“In this current time of education, we really need someone with strong leadership in a role such as that and also someone with deep knowledge and lived experiences in education,” said Briana Morales, an 11th and 12th grade English teacher in the East St. Louis, Ill., district and the 2023 Illinois Teacher of the Year. “It doesn’t seem like [McMahon] checks any of those boxes.”
Still, some educators remain hopeful of what McMahon can accomplish as education secretary.
“I have, I think, more hope for her than a lot of other people do since she ran, or helped to run, a large organization and also does have some bureaucracy experience as the head of the Small Business Administration,” said Daniel Buck, an educator at a charter school in Wisconsin and a senior visiting fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative Washington think tank.
Some teachers point to a perceived lack of expertise
It’s not uncommon for education secretaries to publicly misspeak. McMahon’s predecessor, Miguel Cardona, drew controversy by misquoting former President Ronald Reagan and was criticized by teachers on social media for encouraging educators to use a “lazy Sunday” to get vaccinated against COVID-19, during a time when teacher stress was at a record high.
Trump’s first education secretary, Betsy DeVos, also received significant public blowback from perceived gaffes in interviews and speeches, and others who held the office have also made notable controversial remarks.
But some educators worry that McMahon’s comments signal something more. Responding to the IDEA blunder, Luisa Sparrow, a special education teacher in Boston and the 2025 Massachusetts Teacher of the Year, said, “I think the issue was not just the confusion over what the acronym [IDEA] is, but she didn’t seem to have a strong understanding of really what it does.”
“[McMahon] was referring to it as programs when it’s actually [a] federal law that protects the rights of over 7 million children in our country,” Sparrow said.
Other educators, like Buck, are less concerned.
“Should you know what IDEA is? Yeah, probably. But I care much more about the policy agenda that [McMahon’s] pushing forward than her trivial pursuit of knowledge of the minutia of federal education policy,” he said.
Some educators were hopeful that McMahon’s lack of practical experience would motivate her to engage with and get input from those in the field, said Terri Daniels, a principal at Folsom Middle School in California and the 2025 National Advocacy Champion of the Year, an award given by the National Association of Secondary School Principals.
On behalf of NASSP, Daniels, along with members of the National Association of Elementary School Principals, invited McMahon to the National School Leaders Advocacy conference in March. Historically, the Education Department has sent a representative to this event to talk with school leaders, Daniels said, but this year, McMahon declined.
“Nobody from the department came this year, and that was really disappointing, especially since the initiative to dissolve the department was on the table—it would have been nice to have had some interaction with the department or with the secretary,” said Daniels.
The Department of Education did not respond to Education Week’s request for comment.
The secretary has toured at least four K-12 schools so far—a charter school in the Bronx neighborhood of New York, two charter schools in Florida, and a private Jewish day school in Florida.
Educators question what’s to come for the Education Department
Many educators say they’ve been caught off guard by many of the policy changes initiated by McMahon’s Education Department and feel like communication has been sparse.
For example, in late March, the department abruptly told school districts that the deadline to spend remaining COVID-19 relief funds had already passed, and that it was revoking the extensions it had granted.
Morales, the former Illinois teacher of the year, said her school district had been using the pandemic-relief funds to improve school infrastructure, including heating and cooling across 10 buildings. But a letter sent by McMahon said schools had run out of time to use the funds.
“The letter was just very unprofessional,” said Morales. “It just goes to show she has a disconnect of what’s really happening in communities and what it means to actually look at a school budget, and what it means to fulfill what that budget was.”
McMahon has defended the Trump administration’s deep cuts to the Education Department, saying that the agency isn’t effectively serving students and it’s “time to do something different. And it’s not through bureaucracy in Washington where it happens.”
But educators still have questions about what would happen to certain programs or responsibilities if the Education Department were dismantled.
“I’ve heard some of these different responsibilities could be handed off to different departments and stuff like that, but some of these responsibilities have come up since the [Education] Department was created and those other departments really are not set up to administer these services, “ said Sparrow, the special education teacher in Boston.
McMahon’s and the administration’s actions are creating a “shaky foundation,” said Chase Christensen, the superintendent and principal of the Sheridan County school district in Wyoming, adding that this could cause educators to leave the field.
“For a long time, our society has rewarded that choice [becoming an educator] with a venerable position, one of honor and respect from those around us, and I see that being torn down right now,” he said.
And errors like calling AI A1 or forgetting the full name of IDEA reflect poorly not just on McMahon, but on the education field more broadly, Morales said.
“When you see someone in one of the highest offices as secretary of education not knowing what she’s talking about, what does the public then think of educators who are underneath her?” said Morales. “I think it just has a bigger impact than she realizes.”
2025-04-17 19:35:24
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