President-elect Trump announced on Tuesday that he will nominate Linda McMahon to serve as secretary of the Department of Education on Tuesday.

McMahon is co-leading Trump’s transition team. She was considered a front-runner to lead the Department of Commerce and her co-lead on the transition team, Howard Lutnick, is expected to be named for that role.

McMahon previously led the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term.

Source: Trump nominates WWE co-founder Linda McMahon to lead Department of Education | FOX40

By Evie Blad

President Donald Trump used his State of the Union Address Tuesday to urge Congress to greenlight a plan that would provide federal tax credits for scholarships to private schools and other education services, offering the largest stage yet for one of his administration’s key education priorities.

“The next step forward in building an inclusive society is making sure that every young American gets a great education and the opportunity to achieve the American Dream,” Trump said. “Yet, for too long, countless American children have been trapped in failing government schools.”

States have sought to “rescue these students” with tax-credit scholarship programs, he said, gesturing to invited guests Stephanie Davis, a mother from Philadelphia, and her 4th-grade daughter, Jayinah, who is on the waitlist for Pennsylvania’s tax-credit scholarship program. Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, vetoed an expansion of the program last year. Trump said a scholarship had “become available” for Jayinah.(A federal official later confirmed that U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos planned to contribute to the cost of her enrollment at a private school.)

Source: Trump Pushes Tax Break to Promote School Choice in State of the Union Address – Politics K-12 – Education Week

By Louis Freedberg

A year into his presidency, neither Donald Trump nor his secretary of education Betsy DeVos has inflicted anything like the damage on K-12 education that many public school advocates feared based on his campaign pledges and public pronouncements.

The threat of a major expansion of school “choice” programs from the billionaire duo — in the form of government subsidies for private school tuition — has failed to materialize.

When he ran for president, Trump promised to “pursue” within his first 100 days what he called the School Choice and Education Opportunity Act. In Trump’s pre-election vision, the legislation would “redirect education dollars to give parents the right to send their kid to the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school of their choice.”

Source: Despite promises, Trump administration has had little impact on public education in California | EdSource

By Alam Fram, Andrew Taylor and Zeke Miller, Associate Press

President Donald Trump signed a bill reopening the government late Monday, ending a 69-hour display of partisan dysfunction after Democrats reluctantly voted to temporarily pay for resumed operations. They relented in return for Republican assurances that the Senate will soon take up the plight of young immigrant “dreamers” and other contentious issues.

The vote set the stage for hundreds of thousands of federal workers to return on Tuesday, cutting short what could have become a messy and costly impasse. The House approved the measure shortly thereafter, and President Donald Trump later signed it behind closed doors at the White House.

But by relenting, the Democrats prompted a backlash from immigration activists and liberal base supporters who wanted them to fight longer and harder for legislation to protect from deportation the 700,000 or so younger immigrants who were brought to the country as children and now are here illegally.

Source: Back to work: Government shutdown ending as Dems relent