Katie Britt and Tommy Tuberville vote to confirm President Trump's Secretary of Education

March 3, 2025 - WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Katie Britt (R-Alabama) and Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) voted in favor of Linda McMahon to serve as President Trump's Secretary of Education. The nomination was confirmed by a vote of 51 to 45.

"Linda McMahon will be a fierce advocate for putting parents back in the driver's seat and returning to the fundamentals of classroom learning" Senator Britt said in a statement. "She has a proven background to get government out of the way so educational decision-making is driven by those closest to it, not federal bureaucrats. After speaking with her, I'm confident Secretary McMahon will prioritize aligning education with our workforce systems to strengthen 21st-century skills training and job preparedness. I look forward to working with her to empower parents, strengthen educational freedom, and ensure a bright future for the next generation of Americans."

Senator Tuberville recently spoke with McMahon during a Senate HELP Hearing. During their conversation, Senator Tuberville and Ms. McMahon spoke about the need to promote skills-based education and workforce development programs.

During the hearing, Ms. McMahon also reemphasized her support for preserving Title IX and protecting women's sports. Senator Tuberville introduced a bill, the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, which would make President Trump's Executive Order protecting women's sports permanent.

"Thanks for wanting to take on this monumental task," Sen. Tuberville said to McMahon during the hearing. "You know, I'm a football coach. I'm not a lawyer. I'm not a business guy-taught high school and worked my way up for forty years. This country gives you one thing, and it's what I taught my kids when I coached-the country doesn't owe you anything but an opportunity. And that's the reason this country is the greatest country on the face of the earth. Now when you lose that opportunity-and I've lost many times-I've gotten my tail back up and gone again. But that's where you learn it, through education. I've been to every state in this country recruiting, going to high schools-except for Alaska-in my forty years. In my forty years of coaching and going into high schools, there's not been a bigger disappointment than our education system. I've seen it decline for forty years. It's gotten worse. You're gonna have the task of trying to bring it back. It's gonna be hard to do because you're gonna be fought from every side. This is not Democrat, Republican, black, white. It's not. It's an American problem. I've spent tens of thousands of dollars of my budget when I was coaching in bringing kids in after I test them-they couldn't read past the sixth grade reading level, but they had 3.5 GPAs when they came to my university. We're failing. It is a disaster. If you can't read, you can't learn. And that's the one of the first things that we gotta get back to is teaching our kids to read. We got a lot of teachers that don't teach reading like you and I learned. It's different. We have all this nonsensical teaching of what we call 'Common Core' for math. I still haven't figured that out. But thanks for wanting to take this on because there's a lot of obstacles going to be in your way. And so don't be afraid to make changes. We've had a K-12 system for years. It's a failure. It is an absolute failure. Let's teach our kids. That's the only chance they got to survive in this world, which is gonna be very, very competitive. Now, we have things that get in our way and and what's deterring our kids nowadays. That thing right there [holds up iPHONE]. I had problems coaching with it. I was enemy number one when I told them, 'Put that damn phone up, don't bring it to my dressing room because I want you to listen and learn, not be on there listening to music and reading the nonsense you see on there.' So, you've got a lot of obstacles. The one thing I think we need to do is just look at K-12 and [ask] 'What do we do? How do we get better?' I'm all for workforce development in the last two years of high school, teaching kids to learn to use their hands. And what's your thoughts on that? About work in high school-I'm not talking about past high school-I'm talking about the last couple of years."

"Thank you, Senator. I think when you and I met in your office-and I appreciated that time-I discussed with you that I probably dated myself by saying that when I was in high school, in your senior year in high school, you could take vocational programs, which meant that you went to school the first part of the day, the second part of the day, you could have a job," McMahon replied. "You could be learning a skill or a trade, and those credits would count towards your education. I think we need to get back to more of that. We are not teaching skills-based learning in our schools anymore. And I think we have to look at our entire education system and say, 'Four-year college is not for everyone.'"

Senator Britt introduced McMahon at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.

During her remarks, Senator Britt said, "The status quo in education just hasn't failed students, it's failed parents, just like me . . . Our students deserve better. Our parents deserve better. We have to do something different in order to achieve a different result . . . Enough is enough. We need a change agent at the Department of Education. And that change agent is Linda McMahon."

"I think we do have to get back to teaching basics in school, K-12, but to continue on to what we were talking about, we don't have enough skills-based learning," McMahon told Tuberville. "We don't have enough internships or apprenticeship programs. I'd also like to see, more dual credits in our high schools, our junior and senior years that would count towards community colleges or other institutes that would get students through college faster if, in fact, that is the plan that they are going to take. So, we have so much that we can do to help our students get prepared to have a good income and a good livelihood. And if they can graduate from high school with some skills-based [learning] already, they can even start a business of their own. They can decide at that particular point, 'I want to put more money towards my own education. But in the meantime, I am prepared to make a living.' But I think we have to look at education and say, our vocational and skills-based training is not a default education. It can be something. It can be front and center so that students who are inclined to go in that direction actually should be encouraged to do that. It's not one-size-fits all."