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’s 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’ll 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’ll break it down into sections, and I think it’ll be fantastic,” he explained.
“We’re 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’s really going to be something special.”
Trump then moved from the lectern, which was adorned with the presidential seal, to a similarly decorated desk surrounded by children seated at their own child-size desks. He used his trademark Sharpie marker to sign the order before holding it up. In a surreal moment, the children seated next to him signed their own “orders”.
Despite Trump’s claim that his action will return responsibility for education “to the states,” that task has long been assigned to state and local governments rather than the federal government.
The Department of Education has no role in determining curricula, enrollment or graduation requirements, lesson plans, or hiring in public schools, colleges, or universities.
The Education Department’s role in education is primarily financial — and limited at that.
While it does provide federal funding to K-12 schools, the dollars it does disperse to states and local school districts account for about 8% of total school funding — with a particular emphasis on providing funds designated for supporting low-income school systems and students living in poverty under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
California, Texas, New York, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina are among the states with the highest enrollment in Title I programs.
The department’s annual appropriation was approximately $268 billion, or about 4% of the government’s total budget, making any savings negligible in comparison to what Trump and his allies have promised to cut from federal spending.
While conservatives have long criticized 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, which makes the Education Department the largest provider of financial aid to 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 rely far more on federal government funding than K-12 schools, primarily through financial aid and research grants.
The department is in charge of the Nation’s Report Card, which collects data on student test scores and monitors overall progress.
It also enforces civil rights laws in schools by ensuring that institutions receiving federal funding follow those laws, including those that protect students from discrimination based on race or gender.
Conservatives have frequently criticized Democratic administrations, including the Obama and Biden administrations, for efforts to combat sexual assault on college campuses and protect LGBT+ students from discrimination.
According to a White House fact sheet obtained by The Independent, Trump’s order “directs 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 cut the department’s employee count in half.
Prior to McMahon’s mass firing, the department had a workforce of around 5,000 people — the smallest of any cabinet department — and now has about 2,500.
Sheria Smith, president of American Federation of Government Employees local 252, the union representing around 2,000 department workers, slammed Trump’s order as “nothing more than an illegal overreach of executive power designed to unemploy dedicated civil servants and decimate the critical services they provide to millions of Americans across this country” and said the Trump administration “clearly has no respect for the thousands of people who have dedicated their
“Americans across the nation will bear the brunt of this reckless order. Americans will no longer receive the services they rely on, from the ability to investigate civil rights complaints to accessing financial student aid, among other things,” said Smith, who added that it “cannot be overstated that it appears 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.”