Trump education chief stumps for dismantling of her own department during South Dakota stop
White House plan wants to shift funding and authority to states through block grants
If President Donald Trump and his top education chief have their druthers, she’ll be the last United States secretary of education to visit the Mount Rushmore State
.“That’s the goal,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon told The Dakota Scout following a news conference Wednesday at McCrossan Boys Ranch in northwest Sioux Falls.
McMahon, joined by Gov. Larry Rhoden, is in the midst of a 50-state tour aimed at building support for the Trump administration’s proposal to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education — a move that would require an act of Congress where it faces staunch resistance from Democrats.
“The whole initiative of this administration is really to return education to the states,” McMahon said.
Created in 1980, the federal Education Department has overseen decades of growing federal involvement in schools. McMahon argued that investment has not translated into improved outcomes.
“You’ve spent $3 trillion to see our scores continually decline,” she said, contending that as much as half of every dollar the federal government directs to the states gets eaten up with administrative expenses. “So we’re clearly doing something wrong.”
Under the administration’s proposal, federal funding streams such as Title I and IDEA would continue through block grants, which award funding to states without detailed regulatory requirements. Instead, states would have more authority and leeway on how the federal dollars are spent within school districts.
“You know where you need to spend your money … and not try to dictate from a bureaucracy in Washington, D.C.,” McMahon said. “We want to let teachers be able to teach.”
Rhoden aligned himself with that vision, framing it as an extension of South Dakota’s longstanding emphasis on local control.
“We’ve had a lot of conversations,” Rhoden said. “We’ve moved to the science of reading and replaced Common Core with common sense in South Dakota, and we’re looking forward to seeing better results.”
He said authority should flow not only from Washington to the states, but from the state to local districts — and in South Dakota, there are 147 of them.
“Each one of them has a school board for a reason,” Rhoden said. “Government’s best when it’s closest to the people.”
South Dakota Education Secretary Joe Graves added that the state already administers many federally funded programs, suggesting a shift away from Washington would not require additional staffing.
“These programs are already being administered by staff at the South Dakota Department of Education, so there would be no need for additional staff,” Graves said.
McMahon’s visit also highlighted how those policies intersect with classrooms on the ground. At McCrossan Boys Ranch, she toured facilities that blend academics with hands-on training for at-risk youth.
“They’re not only making up in their academic classes, but they’re also actually learning skills and trades,” she said, describing a stop in a science lab where students were dissecting a piglet. “They were incredibly enthusiastic.”
She called the ranch “a great model” for addressing both academic and behavioral challenges — a need Graves said is growing in South Dakota.
“We don’t have enough placements for children who are struggling,” Graves said. “So one of the things we do is we wind up sending them out of state. And that’s crazy because that just adds to the cost and takes the children away from their parents.”
McMahon said her nationwide tour is designed to identify successful programs that can be shared across states if federal oversight is reduced.
“My goal … is to see all of the best practices that are happening around the country, and then help develop tool kits to distribute to the states,” she said.
Before becoming education secretary, McMahon served as administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration from 2017 to 2019 during Trump’s first term, overseeing disaster relief and workforce development initiatives, including the White House’s Pledge to America’s Workers.
So control of education is best left up to each state but the federal authorities should control the voting process in each state?
Larry mouths "local control" but keeps signing bills that are the opposite, e.g. mandating that ALL school districts accept cash for entry into K-12 events. I thought it was a pain to be required to use a credit card or QR code to get into sporting events, but still believe that should be up to the individual school board. That's just one example.