President Donald Trump signed an order on Thursday aimed at “eliminating” the Department of Education, delivering a long-awaited political victory for conservatives who have pushed to privatize education.
Flanked by schoolchildren at desks, Trump signed the order during an East Room ceremony attended by numerous Republican governors and activists who celebrated the move, including Education Secretary Linda McMahon, whom the president stated pointedly that he hopes will be the last person to hold the position.
Trump claimed that President Jimmy Carter’s decision to sign legislation creating the department was widely opposed, and that poor test scores among American schoolchildren proved critics “right.”
“Students in our public elementary and middle schools score worse in reading today than when the department opened, by a lot,” he said, adding that the department’s budget has still “exploded by 600 percent” to include “bureaucrats in buildings all over Washington.”
Trump also praised his administration for cutting the department’s workforce in half since taking office. But, in an apparent nod to the legal pushback his order will inevitably face, he insisted “the department’s useful functions” would be “fully preserved,” including “Pell Grants, Title One funding resources for Children with disabilities and special needs” remaining in place.
“But, beyond these basic requirements, my administration will take all legal steps to shut down the department.” We are going to shut it down as quickly as possible. It is not doing us any good,” he said.
Of course, the department, like all cabinet departments, was created by Congress, and only an act of Congress can formally close it.
During his announcement, the president claimed that leaving education “to the states” would allow the United States to keep up with countries like “Denmark, Norway, Sweden… and China,” and suggested that high-population states like New York would allow “sections of the state” to run school systems, which already happens because New York schools are administered at the city and county levels.
“You will have Manhattan, Suffolk, Nassau, and Westchester counties. You will complete four, five, or six of them. You have Upstate New York. And I believe those counties will do exceptionally well, as will Manhattan in the long run. But we will break it down into sections, and I think it will be fantastic,” he explained.
“We are going to love and cherish our teachers along the children and work with the parents and everybody else and sing thing to watch, and it is really going to be something special.”
Trump then moved from the lectern adorned with the presidential seal to a similarly-decorated desk surrounded by children seated with him at at their own child-sized desks. He took up his trademark Sharpie marker to sign the order before holding it up. In a surreal moment, the children seated next to him signed “orders” of their own.
Despite Trump’s claim that his action will return responsibility for education back “to the states,” that task has long rested with state and local governments — not the federal government.
The Department of Education does not play any role in determining curricula, requirements for enrollment or graduation, lesson plans or hiring at public schools, colleges or universities.
The actual role the Education Department plays in education is largely a financial one — and a limited one at that.
While it does provide federal funding to K-12 schools, what dollars it does disperse to states and local school districts amounts to approximately eight percent of school funding as a whole — with a particular focus on providing funds earmarked for supporting low-income school systems and students living in poverty under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
And while conservatives have long railed against the department’s role in elementary and secondary education, the vast majority of its budget is used to manage the massive federal student loan program, under which the Education Department is the largest provider of financial aid for American college students — both in the form of loans and other need-based aid to low-income students such as Pell Grants.
Colleges and universities are far more reliant on money from the federal government than K-12 schools through federal financial aid and research grants.
The department oversees the Nation’s Report Card, which collects data on students’ test scores and tracks overall progress.
It also enforces civil rights laws in schools by ensuring that institutions that receive federal funding are abiding by those laws, including those protecting students from discrimination on the basis of race or sex.
It’s those functions that have often rankled conservatives under Democratic administrations, including the Obama and Biden administrations, which drew ire from activists and Republican lawmakers over efforts to combat sexual assault on college campuses and ensure LGBT+ students were protected from discrimination.
A White House fact sheet obtained by The Independent said Trump’s order would “direct that programs or activities receiving any remaining Department of Education funds will not advance DEI or gender ideology.”
In recent weeks, McMahon — whose estranged husband is disgraced World Wrestling Entertainment founder Vince McMahon — has slashed the department’s employee headcount by half.
Before McMahon’s mass firing, the department’s workforce was around 5,000 strong — the smallest of any cabinet department — and now numbers roughly 2,500.
“Americans throughout the country will bear the brunt of this reckless order. Americans will no longer adequately and efficiently receive the services they rely on, from the ability to investigate civil rights complaints to accessing financial student aid, and so much more,” said Smith, who added that it “cannot be understated that it seems this administration is hell-bent on eliminating the much-needed accountability and oversight the Department of Education provides.”
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, responded to Trump’s order with a simple four-word statement, writing on X, “See you in court.”
