Tag Archives: Linda McMahon

Trump: Project 2025 and Education

19 Jul

By Thomas Ultican 7/19/2025

Lindsey M. Burke, Director of the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation, opened her education section in Project 2025 stating, “Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated.” The liar-in-chief made it seem while campaigning that he knew little about Project 2025 and declared it was not his agenda. Don’t be shocked to learn that his education policies appear to be lifted directly from “The Mandate for Leadership the Conservative Promise – Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project.”

On July 14th, the Supreme Court sanctioned the Presidents dismantlement of the Department of Education. Many of us thought that the administration could not shut it down because it would never survive a filibuster in the Senate. As Diane Ravitch wrote:

“But I was wrong. Obviously. It didn’t occur to me that Trump would fire half the staff of the Department and dismantle it without seeking Congressional approval.”

In 1974, congress passed the Impoundment Control Act which Richard Nixon signed into law. It compels an administration to spend the money congress has appropriated. Most people, like Diane Ravitch, never expected Trump to just ignore the law.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, dissented with the ruling which overturned lower courts and allowed the administration to fire almost half of the Department of Education work force. Before the layoffs, the Department had 4100 employees, with buyouts and these layoffs; the department now employs fewer than 2,200 people. Sotomayor wrote, “When the executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it.”

The Current Supreme Court of the United States

It took only ten minutes after the Supreme Court’s decision was announced for Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, to let more than a thousand people know they were officially fired.

On his failed Truth Social platform, even though he knows nothing about education, Trump posted:

“The Federal Government has been running our Education System into the ground, but we are going to turn it all around by giving the Power back to the PEOPLE. Thank you to the United States Supreme Court!”

Attacks and Legal Responses

Two more examples of Professor Burke’s numerous proposals (page 322) in Project 2025 are part of the Trump-2 agenda:  

“Restoring state and local control over education funding. As Washington begins to downsize its intervention in education, existing funding should be sent to states as grants over which they have full control, enabling states to put federal funding toward any lawful education purpose under state law.

Safeguarding civil rights. Enforcement of civil rights should be based on a proper understanding of those laws, rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory.

After the Supreme Court authorized Trump to ignore the law and continue gutting the Education Department, he posted:

“Beyond these core necessities, my administration will take all lawful steps to shut down the department. We’re going to shut it down, and shut it down as quickly as possible. It’s doing us no good. We want to return our students to the states.”

In his March 20 executive order to close the Department of Education, Trump demonstrated a weak understanding of education, “This year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that 70 percent of 8th graders were below proficient in reading, and 72 percent were below proficient in math.” It is well known that NAEP’s proficiency level is set well above grade level which means 70% of students not being rated proficient is not a bad score. Writing in Forbes, Peter Greene shared, “An NCES report back in 2007 showed that while NAEP considers “basic” students not college ready, 50% of those basic students had gone on to earn a degree.”

This termination of employees order survived legal push-back but it is not certain that the Supreme Court is completely corrupt and some of the many legal fights pending may not have such a MAGA pleasing outcome.

 After his win, Trump said, “We had a big win with the Supreme Court over the Department of Education, and we went, as you know, we want to bring education back to the states, take the federal government out of it, little, tiny bit of supervision, but very little, almost nothing, like to make sure they speak English.”

If that is true, why would his Big Billionaire Budget eliminate Title III-A money which is used to assist English language learners. Or end the 1966 Migrant Education Program designed to supports students of families who move for seasonal labor.

Court Battles

In February, Secretary McMahon sent the infamous “Dear Colleague Letter” which attacked diversity equity and inclusion (DEI) programs as being founded on racial discrimination. One response from a school leader refusing to certify that he and his district would end their DEI program noted, “Thank you for your April 3 memorandum, which I read several times — not because it was legally persuasive, but because I kept checking to see if it was satire.”

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon

On April 24th, the Legal Defense Fund Reported concerning McMahon’s order, “Today, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a preliminary injunction blocking the enforcement of a certification requirement from the U.S. Department of Education that threatens schools with a loss of federal funding based on harmful misinterpretations of civil rights laws, threatening Black students’ equal access to a quality education.”

The Wonkette reported about another attack on head start, “Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. added further shame to his family’s legacy Thursday, announcing that effective immediately, undocumented immigrant children will be banned from the Head Start preschool program, which not only provides child care and preparation for kindergarten to low-income preschoolers, but also provides school meals and health screenings.” (Thursday was July 10th)

The ACLU filed a suit April 28th to stop the Trump administrations attacks on head start stating, “Defendants are now dismantling this crucial program in defiance of Congress—a goal specifically identified in “Project 2025: A Mandate for Leadership.” They say they will amend the suit to include Kennedy’s attack. The ACLU lawyers claim this is part of a broader attack on working families in which the Trump administration is attempting to rewrite the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) to make it harder for children to access critical early childhood education. ACLU attorney Jennesa Calvo-Friedman noted, “No agency – including HHS – has ever defined early education as a restricted ‘federal public benefit.’”

As more and more court battles pile up, Reuters’ Andrew Goudsward reports, “Two-thirds of the DOJ unit defending Trump policies in court have quit.”  A lawyer who left stated:

“Many of these people came to work at Federal Programs to defend aspects of our constitutional system. How could they participate in the project of tearing it down?”

Lawyers cited a punishing workload and the need to defend policies that some felt were not legally justifiable for the wave of departures. A few feared they would be pressured into misrepresenting facts or legal issues in court.

In another legal battle, Professor Johann Neem of Western Washington University believes the June 27 Supreme Court decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor threatens public education. The winning parents were opposed to LGBTQ literature of any kind and sued for the right to review all material before their kids see it.

Justice Sotomayor wrote, “Never, in the context of public schools or elsewhere, has this Court held that mere exposure to concepts inconsistent with one’s religious beliefs could give rise to a First Amendment claim.” She concluded, “To presume public schools must be free of all such exposure is to presume public schools out of existence.”

The Trump/Project 2025 attack on public education has become a giant legal battle. Will public schools survive or will our convicted felon president and the radical-right prevail?

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San Diego’s Edtech Lollapalooza

29 Apr

By Thomas Ultican 4/29/2025

Titans of the digital universe and their minions gathered at the ASU+GSV conference in San Diego April 6-9. There was a lot of self-promotion and proposals for creating new education paradigm based on personalized learning powered by artificial intelligence (AI) were everywhere. This year it is almost impossible to find any reporting from the event by “negative Nellies” like myself, on the other hand there are many positive references like Forbes calling it “the Davos of Education.”

MRCC advertises itself as having “25+ years of experience designing and deploying innovative eLearning solutions in collaboration with the brightest thinkers.” On April 21, their Senior Director, Learning Solutions, Kevin Schroeder, published “Top Five EdTech Trends from ASU+GSV Summit 2025.” His list:

“1. AI Is a Fundamental Literacy”

“2. Equity in Educational Technology Must Be Intentional”

“3. The Shift to Skills-Based Credentialing”

“4. AI-Driven Storytelling Platforms Gaining Traction”

“5. Collaboration Drives Innovation”

Under point one, he says AI is “a basic literacy on a par with reading and math.” This is surprising to me. I did not realize math was a basic literacy and whatever makes AI a basic literacy is truly puzzling.

It seems like points 2, 4 and 5 were just thrown in with little purpose. I agree edtech should strive for equity but wealthy people are not likely to want their children burdened with it. AI is known for plagiarism so I guess it makes a small amount of sense as a storytelling platform. As far as point 5 goes, if they can get students, teachers and parents to collaborate, it will drive sales.

Point 3 is particularly concerning. Schroeder states:

“Traditional academic transcripts are being replaced and/or supplemented by digital credentials that recognize hands-on skills and real-world experience. Apprenticeships, internships, and project-based learning are now key markers of learner growth.”

At the 2023 ASU+GSV conference, Carnegie and ETS announced a new partnership to create functional testing for competency based education (CBE). The Wellspring Project is one of the entities angling to profit off this scheme.

A Cision PRWeb report states,

“The first phase of the Wellspring Project, led by IMS and funded by the Charles Koch Foundation, explored the feasibility of dynamic, shared competency frameworks for curriculum aligned to workforce needs. … Using learning tools that leverage the IMS Competencies and Academic Standards Exchange® (CASE®) standard, the cohorts mapped co-developed frameworks, digitally linking the data to connect educational program offerings with employer talent needs.”

Because of the limitations put on learning by digital screens, the only reasonable approach possible is CBE. Unfortunately there is a long negative history associated with CBE. The 1970’s “mastery learning” was detested and renamed “outcome based education” in the 1990s. It is now called “competency based education” (CBE). The name changes are due to a five-decade long record of failure. It is still the same mind-numbing approach that 1970s teachers began calling “seats and sheets.”

CBE has the potential to increase edtech profits and reduce education costs by eliminating many teacher salaries. Unfortunately, it remains awful education and children hate it.

One justification for CBE based education is a belief that the purpose of education is employment readiness. Philosophy, literature, art etc. are for children of the wealthy. It is a push toward skills based education which wastes no time on “useless” frills. Children study in isolation at digital screens earning badges as they move through the menu driven learning units.

In 1906, Carnegie foundation developed the Carnegie unit as a measure of student progress. It is based on a credit hour system that requires a minimum time in class. Schools all over America pay attention to the total number of instructional minutes scheduled. A 2015 Carnegie study concluded, “The Carnegie Unit continues to play a vital administrative function in education, organizing the work of students and faculty in a vast array of schools or colleges.” Now, Carnegie Foundation President, Tim Knowles, is calling for CBE to replace the Carnegie unit.

Education writer Derek Newton writing for Forbes opposed the Carnegie-EST turn to CBE for many reasons but the major one is cheating. It is easy to cheat with digital systems. Newton observed, “But because of the credit hour system, which is designed to measure classroom instruction time, it’s still relatively hard to cheat your way to a full college degree.”

The Conference and People

ASU is Arizona State University and GSV is the private equity firm, Global Silicon Valley. GSV advertises itself as “The sector’s preeminent collection of talent & experience—uniquely qualified to partner with, and to elevate, EdTech’s most important companies.” Under their joint leadership, the ASU+GSV annual event has become the world’s premier edtech sales gathering. Sadly, privatizing public education is espoused by many presenters at the conference.

The involvement of ASU marks a big change in direction for the institution. It was not that long ago that David C. Berliner a renowned education psychologist was the dean of the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at ASU. At the same time, his colleague and collaborator, Gene V. Glass a Professor emeritus in both Psychology in Education and Education Leadership and Policy Studies was working with him to stop the destruction of public education. Glass is the researcher who coined the term “meta-analysis.” Their spirit has completely disappeared.

Recently the Center for Reinventing Public Education relocated from their University of Washington home to ASU.  

There were over 1,000 speakers listed for this shindig. They were listed in twelve categories. The “startup” group was the largest with 188 speakers. The “Corporate Enterprise” cohort had 136 speakers listed. Microsoft, Google, Pearson, Amazon, Curriculum Associates and many more had speakers listed under Corporate Enterprise.

Scheduled speakers included Pedro Martinez from Chicago Public Schools, Randi Weingarten from the American Federation of Teachers and Arne Duncan representing the Emerson Collective. Of note, the list of speakers included:

  • Michael Cordona – former US Secretary of Education
  • Glen Youngkin – Governor of Virginia
  • Angélica Infante Green – Rhode Island Commissioner of Education
  • Robin Lake – Director of Center for Reinventing Public Education
  • David Steiner – Executive Director John Hopkins Institute of Education Policy
  • Ted Mitchell – President American Council on Education
  • Timothy Knowles – President Carnegie Foundation
  • Sal Khan – Founder Khan Academy
  • Derrick Johnson – President and CEO of NAACP

Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, spoke at the summit. Besides confusing AI for A1 several times including when saying we are going to start making sure that first graders, or even pre-Ks, have “A1” teaching every year. She also slandered public schools claiming the nation’s low literacy and math scores show it has “gotten to a point that we just can’t keep going along doing what we’re doing.” She is so out of touch with education practices that she believes putting babies at screens is a good idea and does not know that America’s students were set back by COVID but are actually well on their way to recovery.

Opinion

The amount of money and political power at the annual ASU+GSV event is staggering. It has now gotten to the point that there is almost no push back heard. The voices of astute professional educators are completely drowned out.

I have met Randi Weingarten on a few occasions and been in the audience for a speech by Derrick Johnson. I really do like and respect these people but I find their participation in San Diego unwise. Having progressive voices speaking at this conference gives cover to the billionaires who are destroying public education.

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