This article appears as part of the Lessons to Learn newsletter.

After moving to Scotland, there wasn't much that surprised me more than to find a budding community of devotees to professional wrestling.

It is hyper-American and slightly embarrassing to the extent that even in the States, many of the fans who don't pack the arena watch matches in their closets with the sound off. And yet I've met more avid fans in Scotland than I know back home, even in a hotbed of monster trucks and backyard wrestling like North Carolina.

Because of that affinity for wrestling, many Scots are more familiar with the woman in line to lead the United States Department of Education than I am: WWE co-founder Linda McMahon.

Although Mrs McMahon does not have the most typical education credentials, she does have connections to a particular trend in American education and one that reflects an alternative reality to something that education on this side of the pond is grappling with currently: the balance between public and private education.

During President Trump's first term, Mrs McMahon headed up the Small Business Administration for two years before stepping down in 2019 to take over the America First Action political action committee. She now chairs the America First Policy Institute, a think tank largely comprised of former – now soon to be future, in some cases – Trump staffers.


Among the major education policy objectives of both groups is a push for school choice, sometimes the more specific policy of private school vouchers. This idea has been gaining steam in the Republican Party over the past decade, particularly since President Trump's first term in office. 

The policy's motivation on paper is to make private schools more accessible and to allow parents to use public money to cover private school tuition or home-school expenses.

But that is only sometimes how it plays out.

There are 28 states that now have some form of private school choice, according to an analysis done by Education Week, a leading education news outlet in the US.

But both parties have raised concerns about how school choice policies work in practice. In many rural areas, for example, private schools are few and far between, if they exist at all.

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With a voucher system in place in those areas, public money could be diverted from typically under-resourced and understaffed public schools in struggling communities, with no real chance for local families to benefit. Even Republican representatives in these areas have been critical of the policy in the past.

More vocal opponents, on the other hand, point to the unintended – or, for the cynical, very much intended – consequence that private school vouchers help perpetuate problems with the private education system in the US.

As Sasha Pudelski, a co-chair of the National Coalition for Public Education, a lobbying coalition that works to keep public funds in public schools, recently told Education Week, there are concerns that students with additional needs are disadvantaged in private school admissions, issues with private school curriculums and concerns that, in practice, the vouchers only serve to use public money as coupons for students already enrolled in private school.

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In short, there are serious concerns that this is a policy meant to benefit wealthy families at the expense of the public school sector.

All of which very much flies in the face of the attitude towards private education coming from the current UK Government, which recently lifted a VAT exemption for private schools.

In a recent social media post, education secretary Bridget Phillipson said: “Our state schools need teachers more than private schools need embossed stationery.”

It’s hard to read that as anything less than an acceptance that the needs of private schools and their families come second.

Although it has its detractors and there are concerns about the rollout and the collateral damage to small schools, the stated aim of Labour’s VAT policy is to raise money for public schools.

Will it work out exactly the way it’s supposed to? Few policies are that clean. But I have to admit it sounds better on paper than the president and Mrs McMahon coming at public schools from the top rope.