Education Secretary Linda McMahon kicked off a Fox News interview on Monday by offering a blunt assessment on how children are doing in school.

“We’re doing terribly, I mean, our education system’s failed our kids,” began McMahon, who joined President Donald Trump’s Cabinet last March.

The former WWE CEO proceeded to cite test scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (often known as “The Nation’s Report Card”), claiming that the assessments found “only about 30% of high school and eighth graders can read proficiently or do math proficiently.”

“Think about that. Public schools across the country, only about 30%. Some places, 35%,” she stressed to Fox News’ Harris Faulkner. “But, it’s just terrible.”

McMahon has pushed similar claims about the results of the NAEP tests, which were most recently administered in 2024, the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Her own department’s website has warned that the scores do “not represent grade-level proficiency as determined by other assessment standards (e.g., state or district assessments).” Experts have also raised their eyebrows at NAEP’s use of the word “proficiency.”

While McMahon accurately noted that 30% of eighth graders were at or above NAEP’s reading “proficiency” level on the 2024 tests, the assessments found that 28% of those hit its mathematics proficiency level.

The results also varied among 12th graders: 35% were at or above NAEP’s reading “proficiency” level and 22% were at or above its mathematics level on the 2024 tests.

While McMahon pushes NAEP’s findings on the media circuit, just two senior staffers were left assigned to the federal test-issuing body as a result of cuts to the Department of Education under Trump, sources told NPR in September.

This left the National Center for Education Statistics, the agency charged with collecting and analyzing NAEP data, scrambling for “additional support” from other agencies to issue the report on the tests last year, according to NPR.

McMahon dropped by Fox News to promote her “History Rocks!” tour, which her department has claimed to be a nonpartisan effort to promote the “principles that shaped the founding and history of our nation” ahead of its 250th anniversary.

The tour’s sponsor, America 250 Civics Education Coalition, is notably led by the pro-Trump America First Policy Institute and composed of right-wing organizations such as Turning Point USA, Moms for Liberty and the Heritage Foundation, The Washington Post noted on Monday.

The tour has been met with protests and cancellations in several states, backlash that McMahon dismissed as “crazy” in her Fox News appearance.

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