Exclusive: 12 Education Chiefs Ask McMahon for More Control over Federal Funds

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Some state education chiefs aren’t wasting any time letting the new administration know what they want. 

A dozen state leaders, all from Republican-led states, wrote to Linda McMahon, President Donald Trump’s education secretary nominee, last week asking her to push for greater state control over federal education funds and to avoid issuing guidance they say is “not anchored in law.”

In the Jan. 28 letter, shared exclusively with The 74, they also want McMahon, former head of World Wrestling Entertainment, to send large buckets of funding for schools, like Title I money for low-income students, as a block grant. But they stopped short of stating support for abolishing the U.S. Department of Education — President Donald Trump’s top education policy goal. 

“By prioritizing state leadership and flexibility, the Trump administration can unleash the full potential of America’s schools and students,” they wrote. “Please defer to state and local decision-making as much as possible.”

The letter outlines conservative chiefs’ priorities as Trump takes aggressive steps to reshape the federal role in education. He frequently pledges to “send education back to the states” and is expected to issue an executive order before the end of the month that would call on Congress to close the department.

The memo offers specifics that have been lacking in many discussions over how the relationship between the federal government and the states might change. But some experts wonder if the freedom GOP leaders seek will leave high-need students without services currently provided under law. Madi Biedermann, a department spokeswoman, confirmed they’d received the letter, but said officials wouldn’t share it with McMahon until she’s confirmed. 

The 12 leaders who penned the letter, both elected and appointed, are from Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, Utah and Wyoming. 

Oklahoma state Superintendent Ryan Walters was not among them, despite the fact that he has been the most vocal about sunsetting the education department and at one point, threatened to refuse federal education funds. 

The proposals should provide additional talking points for committee members during McMahon’s confirmation hearing Feb. 13. While it would require congressional approval, the chiefs want to see the nine categories of funding under the Every Student Succeeds Act — like Title I and Title III for English learners — consolidated into a single block grant for “maximum flexibility.” 

They want to design their own formulas for distributing the money to districts so they can address the needs of rural areas, for example, and state-specific learning initiatives. In the meantime, they want the new secretary to grant as many waivers as possible from the accountability requirements of the law so they can “present new ideas” for how to spend the money.

‘Dilute the protections’

Rebecca Sibilia, executive director of EdFund, a research and policy organization, said she wasn’t surprised that the chiefs didn’t advocate eliminating the education department outright. Many of their states rely more heavily on federal funds and spend less state money on schools. The department, she said, is doing those states “a great service.”

While some state leaders might view the federal requirements as “overly burdensome,” she said their push for more control could come at the expense of students who require extra help, like those in poverty, English learners and homeless students. 

“Once you start blending all of those titles together you start to really dilute the protections that are going to individual students,” she said. 

The letter doesn’t mention the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which under one bill in Congress, would move to the Department of Health and Human Services.

“IDEA oversight is giving some people pause,” she said. “That piece of legislation is very specific to education.”

Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, say they have “serious concerns” about any attempts to shutter the department. On Thursday, they sent a letter to Acting Education Secretary Denise Carter asking for more transparency on how the department plans to continue running programs it oversees, like financial aid and afterschool programs.

“We will not stand by and allow the impact that dismantling the Department of Education would have on the nation’s students, parents, borrowers, educators and communities,” they wrote.

In their letter, the state chiefs pushed back on the department’s practice of using “dear colleague” letters to enforce its priorities, which they said have often been “treated as legally binding policy.” Guidance from the department, they said, should merely be a suggestion “so as not to force behavior change.”  

During the Obama administration, for example, Republicans fought guidance that said students should be able to use bathrooms that match their gender identities and another that said districts could risk civil rights investigations if Black and Hispanic students were disproportionately disciplined. 

On Wednesday, the Education Department issued a letter stating that it would no longer enforce the Biden administration’s Title IX rule, which extended protections to LGBTQ students, and that any investigations based on the 2024 rule would be “reevaluated.” 

Nat Malkus, deputy director of education policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said he hopes Trump honors the chiefs’ request, but noted the “chaos” that has marked Trump’s first few weeks in office. Trump’s efforts to freeze federal funding have been blocked in court. And even some moderate Republicans have questioned Elon Musk’s authority to gain access to government payment systems and disable an agency that provides foreign aid.

“The ‘pen and phone’ approach, to quote Obama, whipsaws state leaders across administrations and is lousy federal governance,” he said. “My worry is less about the secretary nominee and more about the ‘move fast and break things’ approach we’ve seen so far in many other dimensions of this young administration.”

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