Trump signs order aimed at dismantling US Department of Education
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WASHINGTON: Flanked by students and educators, United States President Donald Trump on Thursday (Mar 20) signed an executive order intended to essentially dismantle the federal Department of Education, making good on a longstanding campaign promise to conservatives.
The order would leave school policy almost entirely in the hands of states and local boards, a prospect that alarms liberal education advocates.
The order will "begin to eliminate" the department, Trump said at a signing ceremony in the East Room of the White House. Shuttering the department completely requires an act of Congress, and Trump lacks the votes for that.
"We're going to be returning education, very simply, back to the states where it belongs," Trump said.
The order follows the department's announcement last week that it would lay off nearly half of its staff. It is the latest step by Trump, who has been in office for some two months, to reshape the US government and upend the federal bureaucracy.
Education has long been a political lightning rod in the US, with conservatives favouring school choice policies that help private schools and left-leaning voters largely supporting programs and funding for public schools.
Fights about US education accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, a divide Trump tapped into as a presidential candidate.
Trump has said he wants Education Secretary Linda McMahon to put herself out of a job.
His executive order seeks to whittle the department down to basic functions such as administering student loans, Pell Grants and resources for children with special needs.
"We're going to shut it down and shut it down as quickly as possible," Trump said. "It's doing us no good."
Though Republicans control both chambers of Congress, Democratic support would be required to achieve the needed 60 votes in the Senate for such a Bill to pass.
At the event, Trump suggested the matter may ultimately land before Congress in a vote to do away with the department entirely.
He was joined at the ceremony by Republican governors such as Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida. He also credited the conservative advocacy group Moms for Liberty.
The Education Department oversees some 100,000 public and 34,000 private schools in the US, although more than 85 per cent of public school funding comes from state and local governments. It provides federal grants for needy schools and programs, including money to pay teachers of children with special needs, fund arts programs and replace outdated infrastructure.
It also oversees the US$1.6 trillion in student loans held by tens of millions of Americans who cannot afford to pay for university outright.
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told reporters ahead of the signing on Thursday that student loans and Pell Grants would still be handled by a slimmed-down education department. A few other critical functions of the department, including funding special education and civil rights enforcement, will remain intact, she said.
She cited disappointing literacy levels and testing scores among American children as justification for scaling back the department, which was founded in the 1970s.
COURT FIGHTS AHEAD
Trump has acknowledged that he would need buy-in from lawmakers and teachers' unions to fulfil his campaign pledge of fully closing the department. He does not have it.
"See you in court," the head of the American Federation of Teachers union, Randi Weingarten, said in a statement.
US Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat, said in a statement: “Donald Trump knows perfectly well he can’t abolish the Department of Education without Congress, but he understands that if you fire all the staff and smash it to pieces, you might get a similar, devastating result."
Trump has also delivered broadsides against higher education in the US by reducing funding and taking on diversity, equity and inclusion policies at colleges and universities, just as he has in the federal government.
Columbia University faced a Thursday deadline to respond to demands to tighten restrictions on campus protests as preconditions for opening talks on restoring US$400 million in suspended federal funding.
A majority of the American public does not support closing the federal education department.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll found last month that respondents opposed shuttering the Department of Education by roughly two to one, 65 per cent to 30 per cent. The Reuters/Ipsos poll, which was conducted online and nationwide, surveyed 4145 US adults and its results had a margin of error of about 2 percentage points.
Federal aid accounts for 15 per cent of all K-12 revenue in states that voted for Trump in the 2024 election, compared with 11 per cent of revenue in states that voted for his Democratic rival Kamala Harris, according to a Reuters analysis of Census Department data.
Two programmes administered by the Department of Education, aid for low-income schools and students with special needs, are the largest of those federal aid programs.
Republicans have shown little appetite in the past for overhauling the Title I program for low-income schools, which plays the biggest role, on a per capita basis, in conservative states like Alaska, Mississippi, Louisiana and Wyoming, according to census figures.
A proposal to allow that money to be used by private schools and home schools failed in the House of Representatives by 83 to 331 in March 2023, with more than half of the chamber's Republicans voting against it.
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