Linda McMahon, who is President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick for education secretary, has a slimmer educational résumé than has been typical of candidates for the position.
She became certified as a French teacher in college, but she married young and did not end up in the classroom. She has served for 16 years on the board of trustees for Sacred Heart University in Connecticut, where a student center is named for her. She also spent just over a year on the Connecticut State Board of Education, before resigning in 2010 to run as a Republican for a Senate seat.
As a political force, however, she has been a “fierce advocate” for transforming the nation’s educational system in a way that Mr. Trump supports, he said when announcing her selection.
Chief among those policies is school choice, meaning that some money that would normally flow to public schools will instead go to families, who can spend it on private education. This was a major push under Mr. Trump’s previous education secretary, Betsy DeVos. Since then, more states have instituted this policy through taxpayer-funded voucher programs.
“As Secretary of Education, Linda will fight tirelessly to expand ‘Choice’ to every State in America, and empower parents to make the best Education decisions for their families,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Trump also said Ms. McMahon’s business experience, including as the former chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment, would help her spearhead an effort to “send Education back to the states” — a reference to one of his key education campaign pledges: to reduce or eliminate the federal Department of Education.
The platform Ms. McMahon has championed as the chair of the board at the America First Policy Institute also supports teaching American history in a more patriotic, less critical way and increasing transparency for parents about what is taught in classrooms. It also backs expanding technical education opportunities and moving away from an emphasis on college for all, a bipartisan push embraced by many in the education world.
On Tuesday, Ms. McMahon posted a message on social media praising “apprenticeship programs” and highlighting examples of them in Switzerland, which is often cited as a high-performing country whose model the United States should follow.
She also has backed a House bill to make federal Pell grants available for those pursuing skills training programs and technical education, not just traditional college degrees.
“Our educational system must offer clear and viable pathways to the American Dream aside from four-year degrees,” she wrote in a column for The Hill in September.
Ms. McMahon’s support of the Pell grant bill was troubling to many advocates of college affordability. The bill would open up the grants to programs that are as short as eight weeks and let the for-profit sector more easily tap federal aid, said Aissa Canchola-Bañez, policy director at the Student Borrower Protection Center. She said she worried it would help “some of the most shady actors in the higher education space.”
For-profit colleges have stirred political conflict. Many Democrats say they have taken advantage of students and of federal money, often posting poor outcomes compared with many of their nonprofit peers. Republicans, including those in the last Trump administration, see the sector, which often operates online, as an important option for students and have championed policies that help it.
The for-profit college sector applauded Ms. McMahon’s selection.
“Under her leadership, we are confident that the new Department of Education will take a more reasoned and thoughtful approach in addressing many of the overreaching and punitive regulations put forth by the Biden administration, especially those targeting career schools,” Jason Altmire, president of Career Education Colleges and Universities, a trade group that represents the for-profit sector, said in a statement.
For universities that faced accusations over the last year that they were allowing antisemitism to go unchecked on their campuses, there are some clues about how she might view the issue.
The America First Policy Institute has said combating campus antisemitism is a major priority, though Ms. McMahon appears not to have personally written about it. Its publications, for example, call for universities to explicitly disavow language some deem antisemitic and for the elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion programming, which the group says has fueled antisemitism because it teaches students to understand the world in terms of victims and oppressors and, the group says, codes Jewish people as oppressors.
Reactions to her nomination from union leaders, public school advocates and some Democrats were fierce and swift.
“By selecting Linda McMahon, Donald Trump is showing that he could not care less about our students’ futures,” Becky Pringle, the president of the National Education Association, said in a statement. She added, “McMahon’s only mission is to eliminate the Department of Education and take away taxpayer dollars from public schools.”
“Donald Trump has chosen yet another unqualified, dangerous sycophant to carry out his agenda,” said Gaylynn Burroughs, vice president of education and workplace justice at the National Women’s Law Center.
But Ms. McMahon’s allies in the area of school choice were delighted.
“Linda is a fierce patriot and a champion for Americans, and I believe that the first thing she can do is empower parents to be in the driver’s seat when it comes to their children’s education,” Tiffany Justice, a co-founder of the parental rights group Moms for Liberty, said in an interview.
She said that in her view, “President Trump has made excellent cabinet choices,” and that by choosing Ms. McMahon, “he is proving that he is dedicated to reclaiming America and getting us back on track.”
Others took a more measured view, saying they looked forward to learning more about her educational views and finding common ground.
Robert C. Scott, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said in a statement that while he was “staunchly opposed to President-elect Trump’s education agenda” he would “wait to pass judgment on her nomination until she has been fully vetted by the Senate.”
Ted Mitchell, the president of the American Council on Education, a higher education association representing all types of colleges and universities, reacted positively to the nomination, saying that Ms. McMahon’s experience in education was stronger than some critics were giving her credit for.
He said that her work as the administrator of the Small Business Administration during Mr. Trump’s first term “connected her to work force development programs in a really important way.” He also singled out her role as a long-serving board member at Sacred Heart University.
“She certainly understands the challenges of running a small college in the current economic environment,” Mr. Mitchell said.
The post How Linda McMahon Might Approach the Dept. of Education appeared first on New York Times.
