Trump signs order to ‘eliminate’ Department of Education — even though he’d need Congress to do it
President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an order aimed at “eliminating” the Department of Education, delivering a long-anticipated political win for conservatives who’ve pushed to privatize education.
Flanked by schoolchildren at desks, Trump signed the order during an East Room ceremony attended by multiple Republican governors and activists who celebrated the move, including Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who the president said he hopes is the last person to hold that position.
Trump claimed President Jimmy Carter’s decision to sign legislation to create the department had been opposed by a number of individuals, and pronounced them as having been “proven right” to push back on the move, citing poor test scores among American schoolchildren.
“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 nonetheless “exploded by 600 percent” to include “bureaucrats in buildings all over Washington.”
Trump lauded his administration for having slashed the department’s workforce by half since taking office, and said his order would result in “the department’s useful functions” being “fully preserved,” including “Pell Grants, Title One funding resources for Children with disabilities and special needs” remaining in place.
“But beyond these core necessities, my administration will take all lawful steps to shut down the department. We’re going to shut it down and shut it down as quickly as possible. It’s doing us no good,” he said.
The president further claimed that leaving education “to the states” would allow the U.S. to keep up with countries like “Denmark, Norway, Sweden … and China,” and suggested that high population states such as New York would allow “sections of the state” to run school systems — something that already happens because New York schools are administered at the city and county level.
“You’ll have a Manhattan, and you’ll have a Suffolk County, and you’ll have a Nassau County, and you’ll have Westchester County. You’ll do four or five or six of them. You have upstate New York. And those counties, I think are going to do very well, and I think ultimately Manhattan should do very well. But we’ll break it down into sections, and I think it’ll be really good,” he said.
“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 adorned with the presidential seal to a similarly-decorated desk surrounded by children seated with him at at their own child-sized desks. He then 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.
California, Texas, New York, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina are among the states with the largest number of students who participate in Title I programs.
