Trump aims to shrink Education Dept. amid federal grip on schools

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work. Since taking office, the Trump administration has offered a consistent message: It’s getting the feds out of the way of schools by trying to abolish the Education Department. Education Secretary Linda McMahon has vowed to “break up the federal education bureaucracy,” “return education to the states,” and “empower local leaders.” Yet many local and state leaders whose politics differ from Trump’s are not feeling empowered — quite the opposite. “We have seen unprecedented federal interest,” says Aaron Spence, the superintendent of Loudoun County schools, a suburban Virginia district outside Washington D.C. that has been at the center of a number of high-profile culture-war controversies. In July of last year, the Education Department found Loudoun and a number of other Northern Virginia districts had violated Title IX by