Trump to order closure of Education Department

President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order on Thursday calling for the shutdown of the US Education Department, according to a White House official.
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity before an announcement which will advance a campaign promise to eliminate an agency that has been a long-time target of conservatives.
Mr Trump has derided the Department of Education as wasteful and polluted by liberal ideology, but finalising its dismantling is likely impossible without an act of Congress, which created the department in 1979.
A White House fact sheet said the order would direct secretary Linda McMahon “to take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure (of) the Department of Education and return education authority to the States, while continuing to ensure the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely”.
The Trump administration has already 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.
Inequality
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. It’s making sure millions of children never get a fair shot. And we’re not about to let that happen without a fight,” the National Parents Union said in a statement.
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, Mrs 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 of Education”.
The department sends billions of dollars a year to schools and oversees 1.6 trillion (£1.23 trillion) in federal student loans.
Much of the agency’s work revolves around managing money — both its extensive student loan portfolio and a range of aid programmes for colleges and school districts, from school meals to support for homeless students. The agency also plays a significant role in overseeing civil rights enforcement.
Federal funding makes up a relatively small portion of public school budgets — roughly 14%. The money often supports supplemental programmes for vulnerable students, such as the McKinney-Vento programme 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.
Agenda
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.
Mr Trump promised to close the department “and send it back to the states, where it belongs”. He has cast the department as a hotbed of “radicals, zealots and Marxists” who overextend their reach through guidance and regulation.
At the same time, the president has leaned on the Education Department to promote elements of his agenda. He has used investigative powers of the Office for Civil Rights and the threat of withdrawing federal education funding 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 Mr 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 Mr Trump’s first term, former 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. It was rejected, with pushback from some Republicans.
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The Department of Education is the ONLY USA body the seeks to ensure that standards of assessment and record-keeping are consistent between all the states across America. Without it, there is NO mechanism that ensures consistency of standards across the whole country – whether Kentucky, California, Kansas or Alaska . Without it, students graduating from schools will have no consistency on achievement for University entry. Universities will have to rely on their own set entrance examinations. I foresee carnage and signifiant inconsistencies in entry to USA universities . It’s known as ‘cutting off your nose to spite your face’
He also shut down the department looking into war crimes including putins crimes and looking for kidnapped children from Ukraine. There is a lot more going on that one department but nothing that will upset putin.
Oh yeah, he also removed the legal requirement for no segregation in government contracts. Whites only on the way.
Columbia Uni is going to be gutted as well.
This is modelled on the King’s Schools set up by Henry VIII to control who is educated and can join the ruling elite. Prior to this the poor were educated by the monasteries.
Nid yw Trump yn haeddu bod â’r teitl ‘Arlywydd’ a mentraf ddweud hefyd nad yw’n haeddu cael ei alw’n ‘Mr’. I mi, dim ond ‘Trump’ ydy o. Fydda i byth yn cyfeirio ato fo fel ‘Arlywydd’.