Donald Trump will sign an executive order on Thursday that aims to majorly downsize the Department of Education, a source confirmed to DailyMail.com.
The move fulfils a key campaign pledge, the White House said in a fact sheet on the measure, as Trump said during the presidential campaign that the DOE was full of ‘radicals, zealots and Marxists.’
The White House says Education Secretary Linda McMahon will be directed to facilitate the department’s cutbacks while ‘continuing to ensure the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.’
It also mandates that any programs or activities receiving remaining Department of Education funds should not ‘advance DEI or gender ideology.’
The Trump administration lays out a case that the department has been deeply inefficient in its 46 years of existence.
They claim the DOE has ‘spent over $3 trillion without improving student achievement as measured by standardized National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores.’
The White House hits hard on $200billion wasted during the pandemic subsidizing remote learning, ‘which, given the substantial learning loss that resulted, typifies the ineffectiveness of the current federally driven model.’
Trump also claims that the Biden administration made the issues even worse, having ‘wasted more than $1 billion in grants focused on entrenching radical ideologies in education.’
Donald Trump will sign an executive order on Thursday that aims to majorly downsize the Department of Education, a source confirmed to DailyMail.com
The White House says Education Secretary Linda McMahon will be directed to facilitate the department’s cutbacks while ‘continuing to ensure the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely’
They cite the rewriting of Title XI to expand the definition of ‘sex’ discrimination to include ‘gender ideology’ and over $226million in grants pushing gender identity ideology.
‘I want every parent in America to be empowered to send their child to public, private, charter, or faith-based school of their choice,’ Trump said during the campaign.
‘The time for universal school choice has come. As we return education to the states, I will use every power I have to give parents this right.’
In the weeks since he took office, the Trump administration already has cut the department’s staff in half and overhauled much of the department´s work.
Trump adviser Elon Musk´s Department of Government Efficiency has cut dozens of contracts it dismissed as ‘woke’ and wasteful.
It gutted the Institute of Education Sciences, which gathers data on the nation´s academic progress.
The agency’s main role is financial. Annually, it distributes billions in federal money to colleges and schools and manages the federal student loan portfolio.
Closing the department would mean redistributing each of those duties to another agency.
The move fulfils a key campaign pledge , the White House said in a fact sheet on the measure, as Trump claimed while running for president that the DOE was full of ‘radicals, zealots and Marxists’
The Education Department also plays an important regulatory role in services for students, ranging from those with disabilities to low-income and homeless kids.
In his campaign platform, Trump said he would pursue civil rights cases to ‘stop schools from discriminating on the basis of race.’
He has described diversity and equity policies in education as ‘explicit unlawful discrimination.’
His administration has launched investigations of dozens of colleges for alleged racial discrimination.
Trump also has pledged to exclude transgender students from Title IX protections, which affect school policies on students´ use of pronouns, bathrooms and locker rooms.
Originally passed in 1972, Title IX was first used as a women´s rights law. Last year, Biden´s administration said the law forbids discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation, but a federal judge undid those protections.
While the Education Department does not directly accredit colleges and universities, it oversees the system by reviewing all federally recognized accrediting agencies.
Institutions of higher education must be accredited to gain access to federal money for student financial aid.
Any programs or activities receiving remaining Department of Education funds from McMahon should not ‘advance DEI or gender ideology’
Accreditation came under scrutiny from conservatives in 2022, when the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools questioned political interference at Florida public colleges and universities.
Trump has said he would fire ‘radical left accreditors’ and take applications for new accreditors that would uphold standards including ‘defending the American tradition’ and removing ‘Marxist’ diversity administrators.
Although the education secretary has the authority to terminate its relationship with individual accrediting agencies, it is an arduous process that has rarely been pursued.
Under President Barack Obama, the department took steps to cancel accreditors for a now-defunct for-profit college chain, but the Trump administration blocked the move.
The group, the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, was terminated by the Biden administration in 2022.
Much of the Education Department’s money for K-12 schools goes through large federal programs, such as Title I for low-income schools and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
Those programs support services for students with disabilities, lower class sizes with additional teaching positions, and pay for social workers and other non-teaching roles in schools.
During his campaign, Trump called for shifting those functions to the states. He has not offered details on how the agency’s core functions of sending federal money to local districts and schools would be handled.
