Linda McMahon spent Tuesday at Plainfield High School in Indiana, signing off on the state's waiver to pool about $50 million in federal funds over four years and run its own high school accountability system, the third such ESEA waiver, after Iowa and Louisiana. Indiana's Katie Jenner called it a way to "reduce unnecessary red tape" and "put more resources directly into our classrooms." The same day, her department announced it is moving special education oversight to Health and Human Services and the Office for Civil Rights to the Justice Department. Both trace back to the administration's "return education to the states" effort, and the same open question: how much federal structure should sit between Washington and a classroom?

Both moves drew support and concern. On the civil rights transfer, Kenneth Marcus, who ran the Office for Civil Rights in the first Trump administration, argued a more integrated approach with Justice "could bring additional resources, greater consistency and stronger accountability." On the special education side, Chad Rummel of the Council for Exceptional Children questioned the rationale for moving IDEA work to a health agency: it is "an education law," he said, "that means we need to have special education interacting with all of education at the department, not over here on its own in a medical environment." Districts now coordinate with three federal departments: Labor, HHS, and, for as long as it exists, Education. Bettors took note: the Kalshi market on whether Trump will abolish the department jumped from 18% to 24% as the news broke, before settling back to 22%.

Washington's own schools face a quieter test today. D.C. has posted some of the largest achievement gains of any city this century (the Education Scorecard team at Dartmouth, Harvard, and Stanford found DCPS recovered faster than any city between 2022 and 2025), and Tuesday's Democratic mayoral primary could decide whether that approach holds. Kenyan McDuffie is running on continuity, including mayoral control and the IMPACT teacher-evaluation system; Janeese Lewis George, backed by the Washington Teachers Union, has pledged to end IMPACT, which she says "undermines educators' expertise and students' joy of learning." FutureEd's Thomas Toch, a defender of the model, called it "a beacon nationally."

The AI conversation, meanwhile, is moving from whether to how. At a Senate subcommittee hearing Tuesday, Delaware's Cynthia Marten argued AI should be judged "by outcomes rather than hype," and InnovateEDU's Erin Mote noted that more than half of schools still offer no professional development on safe AI use. The 74 ran a companion piece from Overdeck's Lina Eroh and Anu Malipatil drawing the line I keep coming back to — the difference between consumer tech built to maximize engagement and instructional tools built to teach: "The question isn't whether a tool uses AI. It's whether it's proven to strengthen teaching and learning."

-Thomas

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