McMahon's Invent The Wheel Tour

Linda McMahon, current Secretary of Education, has headed out on a fifty state tour to help invent the wheel, proclaim the value of oxygen, and promote plans to have the sun rise in the East.

Okay, the actual tour event is called "Returning Education to the States," because that's what Trump and McMahon have decided needs to be their brand right now. Here's the official website blurb:

President Trump has tasked U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to take the lead on one of his most momentous promises to families – returning education to the states and equipping all parents to choose an excellent education for their children. 

Secretary McMahon has embarked on a fifty-state tour to empower families and hear from students, teachers, and leaders on best practices in their own communities.

Thing is, the states were already in charge of education. McMahon underlined this by making one of her first stops in Oklahoma, a state that has amply demonstrated it will damn well create its own education policies regardless of what federal authorities or people with a lick of sense have to say. Education Dudebro-in-Chief has overseen a variety of policies including First Amendment-violating directives to teach the Bible, launching the nation's first Catholic charter school, and trying to strip teacher licenses for disagreeing with him. At no point does he seem to have felt the need to assert states' rights, because he apparently feels perfectly free to impose his own ideas on the state's education system. In fact, there's an irony here in that Walters has actually tried to align his state's educational system with federal priorities, from calling for schools to teach the Big Lie of 2020 to testing teachers for wokitude as part of a partnership with the right wingnut propaganda folks at Prager(not really a)U.

But here's the thing-- he could do things like turn the state's social studies standards into a right wing christianist nationalist baloney-fest because the control of such things already rested with the state, just as it always has.

There is no "returning" education to the states-- the feds are already forbidden to tell the states what and how to include in their educational programs. 

When it comes to K-12, the feds have two jobs. One is to distribute funding to help level the funding playing field for students who are not so wealthy or who have special needs. The other is to make sure that the civil rights of students are not violated, that there are no more Dorothy Counts stories, no more stories of students who are underserved because they come from the wrong family or neighborhood.

So in addition to making it clear that they don't really want to do either of those jobs (cut budgets to the bone and operate on the premise that the only group subject to discrimination is white Christian folks), the current administration is going to performatively shed itself of the job it never had-- directing education in the states.

Granted, it's not unheard of for the feds to use the levers they have to try to get around the laws forbidding them to direct state education policy. No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top were all about trying to get around the law and strongarm state education departments, and Betsy DeVos couldn't resist the levers of power. 

But a simple "we're going to follow the law" would cover that.

Instead we get this bizarre little tour, the spectacle of McMahon simultaneously declaring "I'm not going to tell you what to so" while also saying "Here are the things you're doing that I approve of."

So the tour has actually been McMahon visiting school choice-related sites, like celebrating with Parents for Education Freedom in North Carolina, charter and private schools in Florida, or shmoozing on Fox and Friends with Gov. Sarah Huckabee. She has touted literacy and career training which are fine things that a "send education back to the states" federal education department should have nothing at all to do with. Likewise, the federal government has no legitimate role in states school choice policies, but she's pushing the heck out of those as well. 

The tour page is also a bit muddled-- the tour supposedly kicked off in Louisiana on August 11, but the map counts a Nevada visit from April. 

That's fine. Bureaucratic baloney and wandering around the country to make mouth noises about your preferred policy are fine traditions of the office. For all her aspirations to be a radical new kind of secretary, McMahon is shaping up to be one more disconnected bureaucrat with an agenda that is at once undesirable and incoherent. One part Arne "Bossy Clueless Amateur" Duncan and one part Betsy "Who Cares About Public Schools" DeVos. "Don't let me tell you what to do, but let me tell you what you ought to do." 

In this country, states have the ultimate responsibility for their own education systems. They don't need the federal government's permission to shoulder that responsibility, particularly from someone who says that her job is to eliminate her job. This tour will supposedly extend to all fifty states, but it looks to me like this series of meetings could be an e-mail.