Linda McMahon (pictured above) served in the first Trump term as leader of the Small Business Administration. A businesswoman and two-time U.S. Senate candidate in Connecticut, McMahon also served on the Connecticut Board of Education and spent years on the board of trustees at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut.
While she has expressed support for charter schools and school choice, news outlets including Associated Press have referred to McMahon as "a relative unknown in education circles." That, says Michele Exner of Parents Defending Freedom, is not a bad thing.
"When the American people voted for the Trump administration to come in in 2025, it was about change; it was to make sure that we were going to fix all the mistakes of the previous four years and get back to the policies that the American people want – and that's exactly what he's doing when it comes to the Department of Education," says Exner.
And while it's clear the president-elect has chosen someone who isn't a "traditional" nominee, Exner adds: "… That's exactly who we need to disrupt the status quo when it comes to education in America."
McMahon was confirmed by the full Senate in 2017 following a vote of 81-19. The committee that voted to advance the nomination voted 18-1.
"That is a testament to her record," Exner claims. "So, we are looking forward to seeing what she's going to do to address all the concerns that parents have had over the past several years."
Tiffany Justice, co-founder of Moms for Liberty, told AFN via email that she is "proud to support" McMahon as President-elect Trump's pick for the next secretary of education.
"Parental involvement is the number-one driver of kids' success in school, and I will help the incoming secretary any way I can to ensure parents get back in the driver's seat of their child's education," said Justice, once rumored to be a potential Trump selection for the Cabinet slot.
"Linda has a difficult task ahead in fighting the union's death-grip over the education industrial complex, but I am confident in the plans laid out by President Trump to make wholesale change that empowers parents and improves the math and reading scores of our kids too."
People, politicians, and special-interest groups are hoping Trump and McMahon will dismantle the Department of Education. Since the early 1980s, Republicans have at times been critical of the DOE – which Trump did promise on the campaign trail that he would dismantle if elected.
What would that do to home schooling in the U.S.?
AFN asked that very question of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). The group's senior counsel, Will Estrada, says his team doesn't agree it's necessary to have a federal education department. For one thing, he explains, the U.S. Constitution says nothing about a federal role in education.
"And it's a fairly recent newcomer in Washington, DC, having been created in 1979," he continues. "So, homeschool success demonstrated that you don't need a top-down approach to education success.
"The beauty of home schooling – and now the decades of success and the massive growth we've seen in home schooling since the COVID-19 pandemic – showed that parents know best. You don't need all the administrative bloat, you don't need certifications, and you certainly don't need Washington, DC, in order to have success when it comes to the education of children."
With the federal education department being in place, all public education in the U.S. must abide by its rules, which – in Estrada's eyes – is an open door to whatever over-reaching regulations the government wants to push. One negative example currently on the radar is transgender ideology being pushed on America's youngsters by the Biden administration.
Estrada argues that homeschooling is "probably the most decentralized form of education currently in place in the United States and probably in the world as well."
In other words, homeschooling largely works outside the reach of the federal government.
Estrada concludes by saying if the U.S. Department of Education is eliminated, it may or may not have any effect on people who homeschool.
"I'm a home school graduate. My wife and I have home schooled our kids pre-pandemic, and home school is something we've known for a long time and the public at large saw it, at least a little bit during COVID-19," says the HSLDA senior counsel.
He acknowledges that many parents have since put their children back in public school. "But they are open to home schooling in a way that they never once were before," he contends.
