By Emel Akan, Zachary Stieber
Contributing Writers
President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order that facilitates the dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education.
“We’re going to shut it down and shut it down as quickly as possible,” Trump said before signing the order.
Teachers’ unions have vowed to sue over the move.
“See you in court,” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a statement.
The order, which has been under preparation for weeks, was signed at a White House event with several Republican governors and state education commissioners in attendance.
Trump is directing his recently confirmed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to take all required steps to prepare for the closure of the Education Department and transfer its authority to the states, according to a White House fact sheet.
According to the fact sheet, the order also aims to ensure that, throughout the process, there is no disruption in the delivery of services, programs, and benefits that Americans rely on.
The order also instructs that any programs or activities receiving remaining Department of Education funds will not promote diversity, equity and inclusion or gender ideology.
McMahon, confirmed by the Senate on March 3, said in her first message to employees — titled “Our Department’s Final Mission” — that her “vision is aligned with the president’s: to send education back to the states.”
She added, “Our job is to respect the will of the American people and the president they elected, who has tasked us with accomplishing the elimination of bureaucratic bloat here at the Department of Education — a momentous final mission — quickly and responsibly.”
The Department of Education will continue handling Pell grants, student loans, and other “critical functions” even as other parts of the agency are eliminated or shifted elsewhere, the White House said on Thursday.
“The Department of Education will be much smaller than it is today,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters in Washington outside the White House, several hours before Trump signed the executive order.
“Pell grants and student loans will still be run out of the department out of Washington, D.C., but the great responsibility of educating our students will return to the states,” she said.
Federal funding to schools with large numbers of poor children, known as Title I funding, and funding for special education are other “critical functions” that “will remain” inside the Department of Education, Leavitt also said.
Trump has promised to dismantle the Department of Education, one of the smallest Cabinet-level agencies.
In a written statement on Thursday, the White House said that “instead of maintaining the status quo that is failing American students, the Trump Administration’s bold plan will return education where it belongs — with individual states, which are best positioned to administer effective programs and services that benefit their own unique populations and needs.”
The Department of Education has already laid off or is preparing to fire some 1,300 workers, with another 600 accepting buyouts, an official told reporters earlier in March.
The agency had about 4,100 employees before the moves.
The official also said that all agency offices, including facilities in New York and Chicago, outside of Washington will be closed.
After the closures, all remaining Department of Education employees will work from the agency’s building in the nation’s capital, according to the official.
The agency’s current form stems from a 1979 law that made it independent by splitting it from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
The federal government’s role in education, according to the White House, has failed students, parents and teachers.
National Assessment of Educational Progress scores demonstrate that student achievement has not improved, despite more than $3 trillion invested since the Department of Education’s inception in 1979, according to the fact sheet.
On Feb. 4, Trump cited global rankings that have the United States behind many other countries, despite spending the most per student. He suggested at the time that he could work with Congress and teachers’ unions to abolish the agency but also did not rule out issuing an executive order.
While many Republicans have praised Trump’s plan, a number of Democrats say that the department should not be dismantled.
“Abolishing a federal agency requires an act of Congress. President Trump’s executive order to dismantle the Department of Education and ‘return education to the states’ will be challenged in the courts,” Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Virginia, the top Democrat on the U.S. House of Representatives Education Committee, said in a statement.
He added later, “I am adamantly opposed to this reckless action.”
Aaron Gifford contributed to this report.
