Education Secretary Linda McMahon visits Massachusetts school, talks federal funding

MALDEN, Mass. — U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon stopped in Massachusetts on her nationwide tour to discuss “returning education to the states,” the administration’s plans for funding and more – meeting controversy in the Commonwealth.

The education secretary visited Mystic Valley Regional Charter School in Malden on Monday, touring the school and sitting in on some of the classes. Massachusetts marked McMahon’s 38th stop on the “Returning Education to the States Tour,” aimed to “empower families and hear from students, teachers, and leaders on best practices in their own communities,” according to the Department of Education.

“My idea in doing that is to get a general scope of the different kinds of curriculum that are taught all over the country, and what teachers’ inputs are, what board of directors inputs are, and so just have a general feeling,” said McMahon. “Being in Massachusetts this morning, it’s great to be here in the charter school to see what their different programs are, as opposed to other schools within the state, and so I was very pleased to see the kind of curriculum that they have here.”

McMahon said the goal of returning education to the states “really means getting the federal government more out of the way.”

“Our proposal is to provide funds that are currently going through many different channels to more of a block grant to the states,” McMahon said of the Trump administration’s budget proposal, “so that governors, state superintendents will be more in charge of how that money is spent in the state, because they are in a position of knowing where the money needs to be spent more so than the bureaucracy in Washington, D.C.”

McMahon also cited an overarching goal to move “programs from the Department of Education into different agencies in Washington.”

The advocacy group Massachusetts Education Justice Alliance was calling for a protest of educators, parents and more outside of McMahon’s planned second stop at the Waltham private school Lumen Academy on Tuesday.

The Tuesday visit to Waltham was apparently canceled, however, with the secretary saying on social media that her tour of Mystic Valley “concluded” her stop in Massachusetts.

“McMahon, a billionaire former WWE executive who now runs the Department of Education, has declared it her ‘final mission’ to eliminate the Department, and has proposed $12 billion in cuts to federal education funding,” the Education Justice Alliance said in a release for the protest, noting they expected dozens of protestors.

The release additionally critiqued the administration’s recent tax credit voucher program as sending “our tax money to private institutions instead of strengthening the schools that serve all kids” and threats to colleges and universities’ accreditation as “forcing a right-wing agenda.”

Asked about the role of federal funding cuts in school districts’ budget constraints across Massachusetts, McMahon said “we might have to look at the state more closely before making that comparison.”

“Most of what I’ve read about the cuts in budgets in Massachusetts have been on the state level and not from federal money that was coming into the states,” said McMahon. “I haven’t really looked at comparison of the budgets for the state, but I know that there — I read an article just last night about how there was teacher attrition in the states, and a lot of that was because of budget cuts within the states.”

The Healey administration did not respond with a statement on McMahon’s visit as of Monday evening. Massachusetts officials have cited constraints from the Trump administration’s federal funding cuts, including one of $106 million in the state’s COVID-era K-12 education grant funding in 2025.

McMahon attended literacy instruction at Mystic Valley on Monday, noting the importance of instruction based on the science of reading and phonetics.

“More and more states are doing that, more and more teachers are being taught in how to teach reading of those levels,” said McMahon. “And again, these are state innovations, not from the federal government, proving that it is really states who really develop the programs for their students that are most effective.”

The secretary said the department aims to “continue to provide tools for states” with this kind of innovation information relative to best practices.

“When President Trump came into office, he looked at the NAEP (Nation’s Report Card) scores that had just come out that January, and he was absolutely horrified at where states were within the country, and how we compared on an international basis,” said McMahon. “And what he said to me was that this is absolutely unacceptable, the federal government, the money that is going to federal bureaucracy absolutely should not be there. That money should be going to the states.”

Massachusetts Teachers Association President Max Page said protestors aimed to tell McMahon “you’re actually not welcome in the state” during the planned rally on Tuesday, before the stop was cancelled.

“It seems clear that she got scared off by having actual educators from public schools protesting her and instead slipped into a really problematic charter school today and then zipped back out to DC,” said Page, citing Mystic Valley’s multiple discrimination and public records controversies.

Page also cited the administration’s efforts to cut grants from low-income schools, research in higher education and others, as well as slashes to the department’s Office of Civil Rights, research and data division, and general staff.

The union president argued public education systems across the country are “less well-funded and less well-protected than before she arrived.”

“She’s part of the funding crisis that we’re experiencing here in Massachusetts,” said Page. “Not to mention also the administration’s war on freedom to teach and to learn authentic history and culture in our schools, to limit dissent and limit free pursuit of knowledge at our colleges and universities.”

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