As McMahon explained, shuttering the Cabinet-level department would require congressional approval and would likely take 60 votes in the Senate, a difficult bar at any time.
“[But] we’d like to make sure that we are presenting a plan that I think our senators could get on board with, and our Congress could get on board with, that would have a better functioning Department of Education," she added. "But it certainly does require congressional action."
Under that plan, the necessary functions of the DOE would be absorbed elsewhere in government. For example, the Office for Civil Rights, currently overseen by Education, could move to the Justice Department; the funding for schools, student loans and the like to Treasury.
The DOE was created by Congress and was signed into being by President Jimmy Carter in the fall of 1979, the fulfilment of his campaign promises to teachers and their unions to put education into the Presidential Cabinet.
Trump has said he’d like to see the states have more control over education, similar to the way he praised the Supreme Court for its decision to return control of abortion to the states.
Shifting of functions
Removal of the Department of Education may be a question, but its reform should not be. That's according to an education studies fellow at Family Research Council.
“You absolutely can empty it out. You absolutely can move functions from one place to another,” Meg Kilgannon, who served in the DOE in Trump’s first administration, said on Washington Watch Thursday. “There are lots way you can manage this.”
Kilgannon told show host Tony Perkins she believes much of the current federal funding for education could be shifted to the states. “I think they’re certainly open to doing that," she suggested. "I mean, if someone wants to sue to stop money from coming from Washington to the states, I’d like to see that.”
Some federal programs would function better outside the DOE, McMahon told senators during her hearing.
TRIO, a collection of eight programs designed to identify and provide services for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds, suffered under extensive bureaucracy, she said.
"These various things, especially the TRIO program, which we both agreed was just hit with a terrible blow just by regulatory action, when some of the students who were applying, their applications were rejected simply because of spacing on a form. And that kind of regulatory control just cannot stand. That is just impossible," said McMahon.
"If I am confirmed [we will] be able to get in and assess programs, how they can have the best oversight possible, how we can really take the bureaucracy out of education," she said.
Not much money for all that influence
The federal government contributes to states about 8% of the cost of funding public schools.
It seems a small number considering the amount of regulations and guidance it puts forth.
Twenty-six states, more than half of America, were represented in at least eight lawsuits challenging the Biden administration’s rewrite of Title IX, the landmark federal women’s rights legislation of 1972.
The “new” Title IX would have forced education institutions to expand the definition of sex to include “gender identity,” paving the way for biological males on female sports teams and in designated female spaces.
The Trump administration, on Jan. 31, sent a letter to schools across the country declaring the end of Biden’s Title IX. But it took the election to restore sanity.
Title IX is a glaring example of the reach of the Department of Education and the way Joe Biden was willing to use it.
“That moral stance that comes from Washington, that bully pulpit – that is the sort of influence that comes from the government that has a profound impact on our schools,” Kilgannon said.
