President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday that directs the federal Department of Education to come up with a plan for its own demise.
“We are sending education back to the states, where it so rightly belongs,” secretary of education Linda McMahon said in a statement after Mr Trump signed the order.
Only Congress can abolish a Cabinet-level agency, and it is not clear whether Mr Trump has the votes in Congress to do so.
But he has already begun to dismantle the department, firing about half of its staff, gutting its respected education-research arm, and vastly narrowing the focus of its civil rights division, which works to protect students from discrimination.
Mr Trump’s long history of attacking the department of education represents a revival of a Reagan-era Republican talking point. It has unified Democrats in fiery opposition.
The department’s main job is distributing money to college students through grants and loans.
It lends tens of billions of dollars to students and parents each year and oversees the collection of roughly $1.6 trillion in outstanding loans for more than 40 million borrowers.
It also sends federal money to support kindergarten to 12th grade (known as K-12) schools, targeted toward low-income and disabled students, and enforces anti-discrimination laws.
The money for schools has been set aside by Congress and is unlikely to be affected by Mr Trump’s executive order. But oversight of the funds could be reduced and moved to other federal agencies.
Those federal dollars account for only about 10 per cent of K-12 school funding nationwide. While Mr Trump has said he wants to return power over education to the states, states and school districts already control K-12 education, which is mostly paid for with state and local tax dollars. The federal department does not control local learning standards or reading lists.
The agency does play a big role in funding and disseminating research on education, but those efforts have been significantly scaled back by the Trump administration.
It also administers tests that track whether American students are learning and how they compare with their peers in other states and countries. It is unclear whether those tests will continue to be delivered, given drastic reductions in the staff and funding necessary to manage them.
Closing the department would not likely have much of an immediate effect on how schools and colleges operate. The Trump administration has discussed tapping the treasury department to disburse student loans and grants.
Any effort to fully eliminate the department would have to go through Congress. Republican members would most likely hear opposition from superintendents, college presidents and other education leaders in their districts; schools in Republican regions rely on federal aid from the agency, just as schools in Democratic regions do.
The attempt to abolish the agency is part of a larger conservative agenda to roll back the federal role in education and direct more money toward private-school vouchers and home-schooling.
2025 The New York Times Company
