President Donald Trump signed an executive order on XXX calling on Education Secretary Linda McMahon to dismantle the Department of Education.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday calling on Education Secretary Linda McMahon to dismantle the Department of Education.
The order tasks newly-confirmed Education Secretary Linda McMahon “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities.” Trump has been an outspoken critic of the department due to the failing state of education in the country, with test scores plummeting and many schools becoming overrun with radical ideologies.
The plan is meant to send education back to the states and give parents greater autonomy over the education of their children. The “services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely” the department provides will not be interrupted, the order stated.
“Today, we take a very historic action that was 45 years in the making,” Trump said at the signing. “In a few moments, I will sign an executive order to begin eliminating the Federal Department of Education.”
Some “critical functions” of the department will still be maintained through the D.C. headquarters, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters shortly before the signing. The department itself will be significantly shrunk and the “great responsibility of educating our nation’s students will return to the states.”
“The Department of Education will be much smaller than it is today,” Leavitt said. “When it comes to student loans and Pell Grants, those will still be run out of the Department of Education, but we don’t need to be spending more than $3 trillion over the course of a few decades on a department that’s clearly failing in its initial intention to educate our students.”
“With today’s executive order, President Trump is delivering on his promise to the American people to dismantle the ineffective and bureaucracy-ridden U.S. Department of Education and return education to the states where it rightfully belongs,” Dr. Keri D. Ingraham, a senior fellow at Independent Women and director of the Discovery Institute’s American Center for Transforming Education, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “It is a historic day in our nation that takes us one step closer to the goal of education freedom for all families nationwide.
