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PODCAST | “Freedom to Learn:” The U.S. Department of Education is Shrinking – and Moving!

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Keri Ingraham on Scaling Back Federal Dominance, Union Control, & Bloated Bureaucracy in K-12 Education.

What does it actually look like to unwind federal control of education? Our Freedom to Learn guests often tackle this topic. To understand what “returning education to the states” really means, we’ve hosted:

• Administration officials, including Education Secretary Linda McMahon, Lindsey Burke, and Hayley Sanon;
• Federal education policy experts whose views range from the cautiously optimistic Lindsay Fryer to the highly skeptical Christy Wolfe; and
• State education chiefs from Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Arkansas (next week’s episode!).

Keri D. Ingraham, Director of the Discovery Institute’s American Center for Transforming Education and Senior Fellow with Independent Women, recently appeared on the podcast to share her enthusiastic support for the Trump administration’s efforts to scale back the U.S. Department of Education and return authority to states and families. Drawing on her experience as a teacher and administrator, she believes that downsizing bureaucracy can drive efficiency, innovation, and stronger outcomes for students. We discussed Keri’s recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, “The Education Department Is Shrinking,” and her observation that the “federal footprint is shrinking, states are innovating, and parents are reclaiming a voice in their children’s education.”

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This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

This season on Freedom to Learn, we’re talking about what it means to free education from federal dominance and union control. It’s been a little over a year since President Trump signed an executive order and instructed the Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education.” You and I were at the signing of that executive order last year. How did you envision returning education to the states at that point?

Keri D. Ingraham: Well, first let me start by saying it was such an honor that President Trump would invite us to be there on a very historic day of saying, we’re not going to continue this status quo in this country of dumping astronomical amounts of money, heaping on bureaucracy, and really not improving student learning despite the spending, despite all of the personnel spending time day in and day out doing this. We are going to turn the ship. We are going to return this to the states. That’s where it’s intended for education to be controlled — at the state and local level.

I was so pleased for the secretary to be there and for President Trump to say, “I’m calling on her to do everything lawful in her power to start dismantling this bureaucracy.” While it’s going to take an act of Congress to fully eliminate the department, there’s so much we saw just going into this that could be done.

Now fast forward a year later, I have been blown away by how much progress they have made. Linda McMahon is a businesswoman. She came in there knowing how to manage a huge organization with big dollar amounts, manage people, executive leadership. And the team that she built has been best in class. From my high expectations and hopes of what would happen in this first year, they just hit it out of the park more than I think anyone’s imagined.

You’re always going to have those naysayers who are like, “We’re just moving around things, nothing’s really happened.” Well, item by item, you can go through and see that they are saving money, they are empowering parents, they’re freeing up states to innovate, they’re putting Education with Labor, with other departments where it makes sense, so things aren’t siloed anymore.

It is a new day. I am so encouraged and more is to come. They’re truly just getting started and downsizing, right-sizing this thing.

You went through some of the administration’s “returning education to the states” steps in a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. You said that “the results are striking.” They’ve overhauled operations, cutting nearly half its staff, reducing administrative layers, consolidating offices, streamlining grants, merging programs, et cetera.

From an outside the Beltway perspective, what does that look like to you?

Keri D. Ingraham: I get to D.C. frequently from Washington state where I’m based. Everything is these acronyms, and it gets technical and wonky.

What’s happening is they’re bringing down this federal footprint and saying, “We don’t need 4,400 employees pushing around paper. We can do this more efficiently and there’s going to be more accountability, more productivity by downsizing it.” They’ve reduced the staff by 47%, which is enormous savings for taxpayers. Just a couple of weeks ago, they announced that they have a building in DC that’s 70% empty, so they’re going to be relocating the Department of Education to a smaller building that’s going to save over $4.8 million per year for taxpayers. What that does is it signals that they truly are bringing down the federal bureaucracy and returning this to the state. Also, that’s fiscally responsible. They realize that we just can’t continue to spend money and not see the ROI.

The secretary has been so clear on everything she’s done, that it’s going to make sense for the education of children. It’s going to empower parents and it’s financially viable and make sense because it’s taxpayer money that’s being spent.

One example of something that they’ve done incredibly well already in this first year: over two billion dollars was cut off of money that was going to these radical ideologies that had nothing to do with teaching kids to read, write, do math, or critical thinking. Instead, that money can be spent where it really matters, block granting it to the states, inviting states to submit waivers from the bureaucracy.

That’s where we’re seeing innovation. I’m really excited as more states are doing that, because every state is different; they’re closer to these students and know what their state needs as far as education, workforce development. Inviting those waivers is saying, we’re returning this and we’re doing it in a way that’s helping you.

Federal dollars aren’t going away. All the fearmongering about cutting special education when our country downsizes this department, is not happening. Special education, programs for low income students, civil rights, all of those things predate actually the inception of this department. Those aren’t going away. What’s going away is a lot of the micromanagement that’s happening in D.C. and it’s been happening for 45 years. It’s been a failed experiment and astronomically expensive.

One other thing I want to mention is the federal tax credit. That has already been codified by Congress. While people say, “Well, the Department of Education can’t get involved with that,” they’re championing it. But it was part of the One Big Beautiful Bill empowering parents when they’re stuck in a school that is not serving their child well.

You’re a former teacher and school administrator, so you have that perspective as to what’s really needed in a classroom and a school, and I would imagine that perspective is not, “We need more layers of bureaucracy.” Am I right on that?

Keri D. Ingraham: Absolutely not. I spent the first 17 years of my career as a practitioner, as you mentioned, with boots on the ground in the school — first a teacher, coach, then administrator in the traditional setting. Then I moved into non-traditional, hybrid schools, virtual. This is all before COVID. Just looking at how we do education differently than the one-size-fits-all, because one size really fits none. And that’s really foundational to why we move [education] back to the states, and ultimately closer to parents and local decisions, because this massive government control is not working. It has not improved student learning despite $3 trillion of spending and 45 years of making it bigger and bigger and more layers of paper, rules, and regulations.

Again, to get it closer to families. They know and love their children best. They need to be empowered as the ultimate decision-maker. When everything is controlled in Washington, D.C., that cannot happen and that cannot happen well.

When we get the federal government out of the way and states are empowered, that’s where accountability is going to come. We see already those that are submitting these innovative waivers, the leaps and bounds in their student learning are going to happen. And the states that double down on these radical ideologies and misplaced priorities, that they’re going to slip farther behind and it’s going to force accountability. That’s a byproduct a lot of people aren’t talking about, but a new day is coming. I’m so grateful for Secretary McMahon, the entire team there at the Department of Education who realize our job is to get out of the way and let those closer to the students be the experts.

You’ve written about the consolidation of some of the programs between Education and Labor. From an outside the Beltway perspective, what’s your take on that?

Keri D. Ingraham: I was super pleased to see it. Some people thought, “Education isn’t about workforce development. It’s about developing character.” Yes, but as a country, we have to equip our future generation to be contributors. And part of that is exposing kids in the way that they’re uniquely wired and created, and where they have interests, gifts and skills. So, not operating education in this silo but linking it up with Labor.

And it didn’t just blindly move over to Labor. Some of the team from the Department of Education, who are experts in workforce development, moved over with it. It’s been a very thoughtfully-planned decision. These interagency agreements are simply one federal agency contracting with another. So, it’s nothing radical. This has been happening for such a long time.

That’s what you do in a business if you run it well. Where do I need personnel? Where’s the expertise? Where should we overlap and not just do things in isolation to, at the end of the day, be fiscally responsible, to drive down costs, but increase quality? And that is, so far, missing in education. This administration is bringing some common sense [and saying,] “let’s reorganize this thing as we downsize it, so that at the end we can have the very best outcome for our future generation.” I was really pleased to see that happening.

Instead of having two different grant portals that a state has to use, they’ve streamlined. They’ve moved that into one, they’ve made the process easier, the points of contact have been dialed down. So there’s not so much confusion and states can really see what they need to do. They can submit it, and then get back to taking care of their state and focus on the children in their education programs instead of spending so much time dealing with the micromanagement process in Washington D.C., which, again, is not educating children. It’s not effective or efficient.

You mentioned the opportunity to block grant funds. That’s something that would have to be introduced by Congress, as would codifying these IAAs. The Department has acknowledged that it’s the role of Congress to make them permanent. They describe the IAAs, this partnership between Labor and Education, as a proof of concept.

You mentioned that the remaining Department of Education staff plan to leave the headquarters at 400 Maryland Avenue and move to a new building. Some people might think that’s not a big deal.

Keri D. Ingraham: The people that think that’s no big deal have not been to the Department of Education. You walk in that building, and it is massive and largely empty. Riding up the elevator, they’re like, “we don’t use that floor, we don’t use that floor, we’re going up here and we only use part of this floor.” This is taxpayer money. So, it’s symbolic, it shows that we’re not going to have this massive federal footprint in education going forward just in the reduction of staff alone signals that. What it also shows is that we’re going to do whatever we can to save taxpayer money, and we don’t need a building that’s 70% empty, so why don’t we get in a place where it makes more sense, and saves money?

Historically, with the Biden administration through COVID, the building was even more empty because people didn’t have to come to work. They weren’t working. But there was no thought to cut it down or to save money. So, these common sense principles that the Trump administration is implementing across departments, and now in education, are just so welcome to us as taxpayers. Americans are trying to be good stewards of money, and we want that from our government as well.

The building is not going to sit empty, I think Department of Energy staff are going to be moving in.

Keri D. Ingraham: Yes, but then that adjusts the budget on all of these fronts. With that, I would also just like to bring back to this outstanding USA Today article that Secretary McMahon put out November 16 during the government shutdown where she said, “Hey, look, we were closed for 43 days, the longest government shutdown at that point in history. And education didn’t go away.” Buses ran on time, athletics continued, teachers still taught, teachers got paid, students went to school seamlessly. She made the point that it doesn’t take this huge federal government control to make education work in our country. They really don’t educate any students from the Department of Ed. That signaled, again, that this is not where education happens in our country. It happens close to the students.

Basically 90% of funding for K-12 education is from the state and local level, only 10% or so is federal. It’s the strings and the regulations and the time away from serving students that happens to serve the federal bureaucracy that needs to be addressed in these various ways.

How do you respond to union leaders and their political allies when they claim that the Department of Education must remain intact, and every bureaucrat must remain just where they are? What’s your take on their talking points?

Keri D. Ingraham: It’s nothing new.

Anytime you’re going to try to get education closer to parents and empower parents to be the ultimate decision maker in their child’s education, the teacher unions lose their mind. They just come unraveled because they believe that their control, their power, is the most important thing. It’s not about families. It’s not about children. It’s not about their education.

So it is not surprising that they’re coming completely unglued, and this fear-mongering is not factual. I remember leaving that executive order signing ceremony and the headlines were already, “the Trump administration is cutting funding for special education.” And that was the narrative for weeks. Again, nothing could be farther from the truth. And they don’t look at the facts. This predates the Department of Education. It can’t be cut.

But again, that just ran on loop for weeks from the teacher unions and their progressive political allies. It’s this fear tactic that education is going to go away, again, to the point of the longest government shutdown, education didn’t even flinch, nothing happened. They’re always going to fearmonger.

Also, they’re going to be against anything that isn’t big government or central control, because they want to get their hands as close to the purse strings, and as much money and control as possible. They fear that their political allies won’t be able to influence their agendas if this is dialed down. So, it’s par for the course with them.

During COVID, parents had a front-row seat in their children’s classrooms through those remote Zoom sessions, and the teacher unions started to expose their agendas. They’ve doubled down as more parents have exited the system.

The teacher unions are doing so much to help school choice and to cause this mass public school exodus, which is continuing. They are so far gone with their fearmongering and lack of facts, but they’re also exposing that they’re not about children and education.

Let’s talk about school choice as a way to free families and children from union dominance, and let’s dig into what we’re now calling the Education Freedom Tax Credit (or Federal Scholarship Tax Credit). Remind our listeners what the tax credit does.

Keri D. Ingraham: On July 4th, President Trump signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill, and a part of that bill is this tax credit that you’re referencing. It’s the first-of-its-kind in our nation’s history. It is a federal tax credit scholarship program for K-12 students, and taxpayers can donate as an individual up to $1,700 per year to a nonprofit scholarship granting organization (SGO) that’s qualified. In turn, that taxpayer is going to get back a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit. So, it’s a wash. You give money to help a child get an education scholarship. And at the end of the day, when you pay your taxes, it doesn’t cost you a thing.

There’s no annual volume cap in how many Americans, and the total [amount], that can be donated. It doesn’t sunset over time. It’s creating these claims that, “you’re going to defund public education in our state,” [or] “you’re going to bankrupt our state by giving money to school choice.” All of those fall flat because this takes no money from state budgets. It doesn’t take money from public schools. It’s taxpayers who say, “We recognize that moms and dads should be empowered. We want to give this.” It’s a really easy ‘yes’ for taxpayers knowing they’re going to get that full dollar-for-dollar match back in their federal tax return when they file.

Now, states do have to opt in. We already have 28 states who have opted in and we’re only in April. This doesn’t take effect until January 1, 2027. So, there is a lot of time. Several Democrats came out last year once this passed and they were a hard ‘no.’ “We’re not going to have anything to do with this because it came out of the Trump administration and because of the pressure of the teacher unions.” Well, they’re changing their mind, and retracting those. Have many Democrat governors signed on? No, not yet. But they’re no longer coming out with this hard ‘no.’ They’re saying things like, “I’m going to take a look at that,” or “We’re going to need to wait and see how the rules come out on this.” They’re recognizing that it’s going to be really hard politically to sell that we are preventing people in our state from donating scholarships to children in our state, and we’re going to let anyone in our state who donates only give to children in other states. That doesn’t make any sense. I think they’re seeing that it is going to hurt them politically. That’s what matters to a lot of these lawmakers that aren’t interested in the education of children.

So, I’m really excited about this. But right now, what needs to happen is we need to educate everyday Americans on what this is, those that don’t follow education policy. [We need to] let them know it truly is dollar-for-dollar, and point them to great scholarship granting organizations, so that starting in January of next year, they can contribute. And, I would say to look for a scholarship granting organization that has a good track record that didn’t just pop up last week or a couple months ago, but find an organization that’s been doing this, they’ve been in the game, they know how to do it. You can check and see how much they give to scholarships versus how much they spend on overhead. Look for the one where your dollars are going to go the farthest to help kids.

We’ve had Children’s Scholarship Fund and ACE Scholarships [and Step Up for Students] on the podcast. American Federation for Children recently launched a scholarship granting organization (SGO), as well. A lot of reputable organizations out there are ready to help provide these scholarships for students.

And it’s not just the old fashioned way of doing scholarships where the funds come in, and then the scholarships go just to tuition. This is for a wide array of education expenses, including expenses that benefit public school students. Public school students could benefit from things like tutoring. And that’s where those 22 governors that haven’t opted in yet really need to rethink their position. They can’t use the old fashioned, “I don’t want to support private school vouchers” argument. That’s not what this is.

Keri D. Ingraham: Such a good point you make, that these are flexible. They can be used for private school tuition fees, but also things like transportation, tutoring, as you mentioned, which is hugely needed for all students. It can be used for a variety of curriculum and educational technology.

I hear you saying that folks need to make sure that they’re educating people in their communities and states, so they know to redirect their tax dollars that they owe the IRS to a scholarship granting organization and that they’ll get credit for $1,700 per year from doing that. They also need to be educating their governors and state leaders who haven’t opted in yet. They also need to be informing parents about it so that the parents are ready to apply for these scholarships. That’s something that I worry about in our world of expanding education options. There are so many options, but are we making sure that parents know about them, and they know which portal to go to, and how to navigate it? Because it can be overwhelming.

I’d love for you to talk about your recent piece that cited evidence of the benefits of school choice. Do you want to share some of the data, some of the evidence that you’ve seen?

Keri D. Ingraham: Absolutely. School choice is the most effective way to improve education for children academically — for those who exit, as well as for children who remain.

When school choice is in a community, that principle of competition increases the quality of the public schools. Now, this may not happen overnight. This may not happen if you just have five families leave, only when there’s true market competition. Florida is a great example because they’ve had this tax credit scholarship for decades now, and we see that that truly does increase the learning of public school kids who remain, because public schools realize they’re going to continue to lose kids if they don’t do a better job.

School choice is the fastest, most effective way to improve education in our country for every single child in all of the sectors. Competition works, free market principles increase quality, drive down costs, and spur innovation. What’s more needed in our education world than those three things today? That is one outcome that these studies are showing, is the academics go up for all children. But beyond that, when a child has access to school choice, in a variety of states, we’ve seen data that consistently shows they have higher high school graduation rates, as well as college.

These new environments, when it’s a different school culture or different expectations, really do produce the lifelong persistence it takes to get through college, and also gives students great preparation for life when they’re being challenged and their heart and mind is being cultivated.

Unfortunately, in the majority of our public schools today, they’re being taught things like an anti-American worldview, and they’re being taught to be an activist. Why is class time with taxpayer money being spent to have children protest to take to the streets on things they know nothing about? They can’t read, they can’t write, they don’t know basic reasoning.

But they’re being indoctrinated in these political ideologies that again have nothing to do with preparing them to be successful in life. They’re not going to be full-time protesters. So what we’re seeing in school choice, some of these benefits in the studies are showing, is its better character outcome, workforce development and life preparation.

Across the board, school choice makes sense. It’s also fiscally a good move for a state. Instead of giving X dollars of funding to the public school, through a lot of these programs, like education savings accounts and private school scholarships, that family only gets a portion of their child’s funding that would be given to the public school. It creates enormous savings for the state. So, to me, school choice makes all kinds of sense and I’m so grateful that this administration recognizes that and they’re taking steps to make it a reality.

Right, and certainly we want to acknowledge that states are recognizing that and expanding school choice and education freedom at the state level. Is there a school choice myth that really bothers you that you’d want to dispel today as we conclude?

Keri D. Ingraham: Every single one, absolutely. So I touched on this idea that it’s going to bankrupt the state, it’s going to take money from public school children and harm them. And that’s simply not the case because school choice benefits all kids, even those who remain.

I think one of the myths that is really important to expose is that educators are the experts of children. It is parents, moms and dads, who know and love their children best. They’re going to be there far past the school day, far past the school year when those teachers come and go. And when a parent drops their child off at school or puts them on the bus, they don’t lose their parental rights, and they are the best and the first educators of their children. This myth that parents don’t have what it takes or have enough education to educate their child is simply not true.

Again, parents love their child best, and they’ve got to be the ones making the decision. We have got to destroy that myth, because nobody knows better for their child than moms and dads.

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