President Donald Trump is set to sign an executive order on Thursday that aims to abolish the U.S. Education Department. This move aligns with his campaign pledge to do away with an agency that has long been criticized by conservatives.
Trump has criticized the Education Department as wasteful and influenced by liberal beliefs. However, completely getting rid of it would likely require approval from Congress, as it was established by Congress in 1979.
According to a White House document, the executive order will instruct Secretary Linda McMahon to initiate the closure of the Education Department and transfer educational decision-making back to individual states. This directive aims to ensure that essential services, programs, and benefits for the American people continue without interruption.
Trump’s action will make the department much smaller than it is today, but it will continue managing federal student loans and Pell grants, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday. Other critical department duties such as enforcement of civil rights will remain, she said, but she did not say how they will be fulfilled.
“The great responsibility of education, educating our nation’s students will return to the states,” Leavitt told reporters Thursday.
Already, Trump’s Republican administration has been gutting the agency. Its workforce is being slashed in half, and there have been deep cuts to the Office for Civil Rights and the Institute of Education Sciences, which gathers data on the nation’s academic progress.
Advocates for public schools said eliminating the department would leave children behind in an American education system that is fundamentally unequal.
“This isn’t fixing education,” the National Parents Union said in a statement. “It’s making sure millions of children never get a fair shot. And we’re not about to let that happen without a fight.”
Trump’s order is “dangerous and illegal” and will disproportionately hurt low-income students, students of color and those with disabilities, said Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
The department “was founded in part to guarantee the enforcement of students’ civil rights,” Scott said. “Champions of public school segregation objected, and campaigned for a return to ‘states’ rights.'”
Supporters of Trump’s vision for education welcomed the order.
“No more bloated bureaucracy dictating what kids learn or stifling innovation with red tape,” Tiffany Justice, co-founder of Moms for Liberty, said on social media. “States, communities, and parents can take the reins – tailoring education to what actually works for their kids.”
The White House has not spelled out formally which department functions could be handed off to other departments or eliminated altogether. At her confirmation hearing, McMahon said she would preserve core initiatives, including Title I money for low-income schools and Pell grants for low-income college students. The goal of the administration, she said, would be “a better functioning” department.
The department sends billions of dollars a year to schools and oversees $1.6 trillion in federal student loans.
Currently, much of the agency’s work revolves around managing money – both its extensive student loan portfolio and a range of aid programs for colleges and school districts, like school meals and support for homeless students. The agency also is key in overseeing civil rights enforcement.
States and districts already control local schools, including curriculum, but some conservatives have pushed to cut strings attached to federal money and provide it to states as “block grants” to be used at their discretion. Block granting has raised questions about vital funding sources including Title I, the largest source of federal money to America’s K-12 schools. Families of children with disabilities have despaired over what could come of the federal department’s work protecting their rights.
Federal funding makes up a relatively small portion of public school budgets – roughly 14%. The money often supports supplemental programs for vulnerable students, such as the McKinney-Vento program for homeless students or Title I for low-income schools.
Colleges and universities are more reliant on money from Washington, through research grants along with federal financial aid that helps students pay their tuition.
Republicans have talked about closing the Education Department for decades, saying it wastes taxpayer money and inserts the federal government into decisions that should fall to states and schools. The idea has gained popularity recently as conservative parents’ groups demand more authority over their children’s schooling.
In his platform, Trump promised to close the department “and send it back to the states, where it belongs.” Trump has cast the department as a hotbed of “radicals, zealots and Marxists” who overextend their reach through guidance and regulation.
Even as Trump moves to dismantle the department, he has leaned on it to promote elements of his agenda. He has used investigative powers of the Office for Civil Rights and the threat of withdrawing federal education money to target schools and colleges that run afoul of his orders on transgender athletes participating in women’s sports, pro-Palestinian activism and diversity programs.
Even some of Trump’s allies have questioned his power to close the agency without action from Congress, and there are doubts about its political popularity. The House considered an amendment to close the agency in 2023, but 60 Republicans joined Democrats in opposing it.
During Trump’s first term, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos sought to dramatically reduce the agency’s budget and asked Congress to bundle all K-12 funding into block grants that give states more flexibility in how they spend federal money. That move was rejected, with pushback from some Republicans.
Leavitt is one of three administration officials named in a lawsuit by The Associated Press on First and Fifth Amendment grounds. The AP says the three are punishing the news agency for editorial decisions they oppose. The White House says the AP is not following an executive order to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
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