President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order on Thursday dismantling the Department of Education, a long-awaited move that would fulfill a key promise he made on the campaign trail.
A summary of the order shows that it directs Education Secretary Linda McMahon to take “all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return education authority to the States.”
However, the order also directs the “uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely,” according to the summary.
McMahon was only confirmed as Education Secretary earlier this month, but Trump previously said he hoped she would put herself “out of a job.”
A number of Republican governors, advocates for parental rights in education, and others are expected to be at the signing on Thursday.
Trump’s promise to close the department was met with cheers on the campaign trail.
“I say it all the time, I’m dying to get back to do this. We will ultimately eliminate the federal Department of Education,” Trump said at a September rally in Wisconsin. “We will drain the government education swamp and stop the abuse of your taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate America’s youth with all sorts of things that you don’t want to have our youth hearing.”
Frustration with public schools reached a boiling point during the last several years. During the pandemic, parents pleaded with schools to open the classrooms and stop requiring face masks on children. After COVID, parents lashed out over crippling learning loss, schools hiding children’s gender identity changes, and teachers pushing controversial ideologies like Critical Race Theory.
The department has already eliminated about half its staffers. It also recently terminated over $600 million in grants for training teachers in “divisive ideologies” including social justice activism, anti-racism, and recruiting teachers based on race.
The order “will empower parents, states, and communities to take control and improve outcomes for all students,” Harrison Fields, White House principal deputy press secretary, said in a statement, adding that recent test scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress exam “reveal a national crisis ‒ our children are falling behind.”
The Education Department was established by President Jimmy Carter, who signed legislation creating the Cabinet-level department in 1979. Eliminating it outright would require another act of Congress, but Trump’s order is expected to dismantle the department in the meantime.
Trump’s order will almost certainly face legal challenges from critics like teachers’ unions, who have made it clear in recent months that they still want the department around.
