The 74

Before she became education secretary, Linda McMahon spent four years strategizing President Donald Trump’s return to the White House. His election was a triumph for conservatives and a chance to unwind decades of what they consider intrusions into state and local education matters. One year ago today, Trump took the oath of office for a second time and set it all in motion. Through executive orders, layoffs, and canceled contracts, he and McMahon carried out a frontal assault on a federal agency Congress created in 1979, the U.S. Department of Education. The nation has experienced “some of the most rapid and likely consequential changes in education policy” since the mid-1960s, when lawmakers passed the Civil Rights Act and the law creating Title I funding for children in poverty, said Jeffrey Henig, a professor emeritus at Teachers College, Columbia University. Under President George W. Bush, the No Child Left Behind Act further deepened Washington’s involvement in schools. But those initiatives used the strength of the federal government to expand educational opportunities for poor and minority students, Henig said, while this administration is turning away from a focus on equity.