By Tate Miller
The Center Square

U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon’s statement that the now more than two-week long government shutdown reveals the U.S. Department of Education is unnecessary – an idea the Trump administration has been pushing–met with agreement and approval from policy directors.

“Two weeks in [to the shutdown], millions of American students are still going to school, teachers are getting paid, and schools are operating as normal,” McMahon said in an X post.

“It confirms what the President has said: the federal Department of Education is unnecessary, and we should return education to the states,” McMahon said.

Due to the government shutdown, the Department of Education did not respond to The Center Square’s request for comment.

Founder and president Nicole Neily of the education restoration organization Defending Education told The Center Square that “Secretary McMahon is absolutely correct: the federal government has very little involvement in the day-to-day business of running schools.”

“Indeed, much of the Department’s function is to return taxpayers’ dollars back to them with strings attached,” Neily said.

“States and localities are – and always have been – the primary drivers of education policy, and rightly so; when policymakers are closer to their constituents, they can make decisions that best suit local needs and preferences,” Neily said.

Policy director at family advocacy organization American Principles Project Paul Dupont likewise told The Center Square that “Secretary McMahon hit the nail on the head here.”

“For decades, Washington has spent billions of dollars on education just to see student outcomes plunge to new lows,” Dupont said. “And this latest government shutdown has shown just how little the Department of Education does that actually has any impact on your typical public school.”

“Reducing this unnecessary bureaucracy is an important goal, and President Trump and Secretary McMahon have shown invaluable leadership in working to make this happen,” Dupont said.

Acting Director of the Center for Education Policy and Will Skillman Senior Research Fellow in Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation Jonathan Butcher told The Center Square he too agrees with McMahon.

“Research has demonstrated time and again that the agency creates paperwork and bureaucracy and gets in the way of parent choices, as well as state and local education officials setting priorities for their schools,” Butcher said.

For instance, due to federal laws and regulations, millions of hours of paperwork and millions of dollars coming from taxpayers have been required each year, Butcher said.

These figures Butcher referred to “strongly suggest that the number of federal programs and operational activity of the agency, as well as the requirements of the federal department for state departments of education, have not been substantially reduced in the last 27 years,” he told The Center Square.

Butcher said the Education Department should be shut down with education returning to the states.

Butcher told The Center Square that “the agency has not led to more efficient use of taxpayer spending,” with “per student spending [at] near an all-time high and student test scores in math, reading, history/geography…at or near all-time lows.”

Additionally, Butcher said that “the level of civil rights complaints and litigation involving students with disabilities” has not improved either via the department.

Dupont also maintains that the Education Department should be dismantled, telling The Center Square that “education is an issue normally best handled by those closest to the community: state and local lawmakers.”

“Although the federal government can sometimes have an important role to play in ensuring safety and fairness for students – for example, by protecting girls from having to share their bathrooms and sports with males – most of what the Department of Education has done over the years has been either ineffective or actually made our education system worse,” Dupont said.

“President Trump and Secretary McMahon have been striking exactly the right balance: enforcing federal law where necessary and otherwise deferring education policy to the states,” Dupont said.