Education Secretary McMahon’s Smart First Move

Plus, Trump stablecoin; more talent flees Harvard

Stairs at Vertex Partnership Academies in the Bronx remind students and staff of the qualities it cultivates. Photo: The Editors.

America will probably survive without a secretary of education—eliminating the job, along with the department, is a Trump goal—but so long as the position does still exist, Linda McMahon is off to an impressive start.

It didn’t get a lot of national press attention, but McMahon made her first school visit as Education Secretary earlier of this month to—of all places—Vertex Partnership Academies, a charter school in the Bronx.

That’s the school founded by Ian Rowe. In December 2022 I visited the school myself, met with Rowe, and wrote about it for the Philanthropy Roundtable (“New Bronx School Teaching Students Their Futures Are in Their Control.”) That piece concluded:

Rowe says he’s sometimes accused of denying the reality of systemic racism. “Systemic racism, structural racism, institutional racism — if you’re going to talk about those three kinds of racism, then let’s talk about a fourth kind: surmountable racism,” he says.

He denounces educators trying to convince 12-year-olds that there are all those powerful forces arrayed against them.

“You’ve just got to fight back against all that nonsense. I just reject it,” he says. “There are no victims in our schools. There are only architects of their own lives.”

Anyway, of all the schools in America to choose to make a first visit to, McMahon sent an unmistakable message—and an encouraging one—with the visit to Vertex. One reason to preserve the post of education secretary is the ability it carries to communicate values and priorities. If done carefully and well, that can have real power.

Trump stablecoin: World Liberty Financial, a company affiliated with President Trump and his family and also with the family of Trump administration diplomat Steven Witkoff, “announced its plans to launch USD1, a stablecoin redeemable 1:1 for the US dollar.”