By Michael Donoghue, Vermont News First
U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon is visiting sites in Vermont today and Tuesday to discuss education as part of her nationwide Returning Education to the States Tour.
McMahon is traveling to all 50 states to hear directly from teachers, parents, and community leaders about what is working in their communities for their students and compile a toolkit of best practices to distribute to states.
It is part of an effort to decentralize and deemphasize the focus on the Department in Washington, D.C.,
McMahon flew into Patrick J. Leahy Burlington International Airport in South Burlington this afternoon after spending much of the day on an educational tour in Massachusetts.
She was due to have a team dinner tonight in a downtown Burlington restaurant.
Her itinerary on Tuesday includes a planned stop at the Center for Technology, Essex on Educational Drive in the morning and later a visit at the Vermont State University – Williston campus.
McMahon is due to leave Vermont early Tuesday afternoon.
A spokesman said much of her visit is focused on career jobs, including cosmetology and dental at the Essex center and nursing and dental at VSU-Williston.
McMahon is a longtime advocate for education and workforce development and is a former Administrator of the Small Business Administration (SBA) from 2017-19. She is best known as the CEO that helped build the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) in Connecticut from a regional operation into a multibillion dollar global enterprise.
During her visit to Massachusetts on Monday, McMahon started her day at Mystic Valley Regional Charter School in Malden, where she toured a 4th grade history class and three reading comprehension classes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades, her staff said.
They said McMahon also convened a roundtable with teachers to discuss state-led education, chronic absenteeism, and strategies to strengthen teacher retention.
The Secretary also visited a Jewish school, where she observed several classrooms, including an elementary literacy lesson, a 7th grade social studies class, and an 11th grade history class.
McMahon needs to make stops in Maine and New Hampshire to complete her New England tours, according to the Education Department website.
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Categories: Education
With our nation celebrating the 250th year of our foundations, and much of that is entwined with the Bible, will the honorable Linda McMahon be doing anything that will provide details about the effects of the absence of the Bible in our schools and teaching about the Constitution to our children? It used to be that schools were built in the US to allow students to learn to read the Bible and almost every Ivy League school was established primarily to train ministers of the gospel. Might she and others plan to do something to reinsert Bible awareness, stories, or even studies into our schools?