Trump Signs Executive Order to ‘eliminate’ Department of Education , Here's Why and and What Next? United States President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education in a bid to deliver on a campaign promise.
The department has long been pilloried by conservatives who argued that education should endure under state control and the department is polluted by liberal ideas.
Constitutional challenges stand in the way of a smooth rollout of Trump’s order on Thursday. Here is all we know:
The department is a cabinet-level agency that oversees the national education policy of the US. It was formed in 1979 by Congress, prompted by former Democratic President Jimmy Carter.
The department distributes federal loans and aid for education, containing the Pell Grant, which benefits low-income university students; collects data on the US education system; identifies issues in the system; and enforces federal education laws pertaining to nondiscrimination and civil rights.
Even before Trump signed the executive order, his administration had been driving attrition in the agency.
Before Trump was inaugurated, the department had 4,133 workers. Since his inauguration on January 20, its staff has been nearly halved with 600 employees voluntarily resigning while the rest were placed on administrative leave. As of March 11, there were roughly 2,183 workers in the department.
The job cuts are occurring alongside workforce cuts across the federal government led by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
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The order is summoned Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities. It summons on long-term Trump ally and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to facilitate the department’s closure.
The order reveals closing the department would give children and their parents a chance to escape “a system that is failing them”.
“The Federal education bureaucracy is not working,” the order discloses, citing 2024 data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The data showed 70 percent of eighth graders were below proficient in reading and 72 percent were below proficient in mathematics.
NAEP’s say showed there has not been a significant alternate in how students have been scoring on reading and mathematics since 2022.
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More broadly, NAEP data shows that since the early 1970s, average goals for reading for eighth graders have not significantly enlarged or depreciated. From 1973, average mathematics goals rose steadily until 2012, after which they saw a slight dip and steadily extenuated before picking up a little in 2024.
According to the Better Life Index, created by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and published in 2020, the US ranked eighth out of 41 countries in terms of educational attainment. However, in terms of student skill, the US ranked 19th. In addition, the average student in the US fared above the OECD average in reading, literacy, mathematics and science.
In mathematics, the US ranked 28th out of 37 OECD countries in 2022, according to the Pew Research Center. In science, the US ranked 12th in the same year.
According to a 2024 opinion poll conducted by the national nonprofit All4Ed, 58 percent of respondents across party lines did not require the Department of Education to be abrogated.
“This is political theater, not serious public policy,” Ted Mitchell, president of a nonprofit higher education organisation, the American Council on Education, stated in response to Trump’s order.
“The administration and Congress should focus on amending on the important work that the department performs that benefits ordinary Americans, not unilateral and thoughtless cuts to the department’s workforce and ability to serve Americans,” Mitchell stated in a statement on Thursday.
According to Trump’s executive order, loans and grants will abide to be delivered.
The department is the bigger source of loans for US college students. The outstanding loan equality in the US stands at $1.69 trillion for nearly 43 million student borrowers.
The order reveals “the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely” will be ensured.
Trump reported on Thursday that these services are “going to be preserved in full and redistributed to various other agencies and departments that will take very good care of them”.
While it is unclear how this redistribution will pan out, Trump has stated states would take over most of the department’s functions.
While Trump has given assurances that federal loans won’t be affected, his policy shifts have resulted in higher education institutions preparing for funding cuts.
There are likewise fears about travel bans and deportations of students and staff after recent detentions of Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil and Georgetown University postdoctoral fellow Badar Khan Suri for pro-Palestine views.
On Wednesday, Trump crack $175m in federal funding to his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, for allowing transgender women to compete in women’s sports. Ten days before this crack, the university pre-emptively implemented a hiring freeze and publicized spending reviews.
Duke University in North Carolina introduced the series of cost-cutting determines most recent week that contained a staff hiring freeze. “We are anticipating less federal funding coming into the institution. We’re anticipating the possibility of paying more taxes, and we’re further anticipating less encouragement for healthcare,” Chris Simmons, Duke’s vice president for government relations, informed the graduate and professional student government, according to Duke’s student newspaper, The Chronicle.
Columbia University had a Thursday deadline to cling with a range of demands from the Trump administration to receive $400m in federal research funds that were frozen over allegations that the private school wasn’t doing enough to combat anti-Semitism. It is unclear whether Columbia has accepted those demands, which contain giving the federal government oversight over a department and banning masks at demonstrates.
Trump’s order cannot roll out without approval from Congress because only the legislature has the discretion to close a cabinet-level department.
Some members of Congress have stepped forward, declaring they would encouragement Trump’s move.
“I agree with President Trump that the Department of Education has failed its mission,” Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana stated in the news release.
“Since the Department can only be shut down with congressional approval, I will encouragement the President’s scores by submitting legislation to attain this as soon as possible.”
However, it might not be easy for Trump to get congressional approval.
If the legislation is introduced, 60 members of the 100-seat Senate will require to elect to shut down the department. Only 53 Senators are Republican, falling short of the required majority.
In 2023, the House of Representatives elected to close the agency. The move was disputed not only by Democrats nevertheless likewise by 60 Republicans. The House currently has 218 Republican members and 213 Democrats.
Category: World-News
Tag: Trump Signs Executive Order to eliminate Department of Education Heres Why and and What Next
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Published 3/22/2025