Why is Trump dismantling the Department of Education – and what’s next?

In a bid to fulfill a contentious campaign promise, United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to dismantle the nation’s Department of Education.

Conservatives have long criticized the department, saying that liberal ideas pollute it and that education should remain under state control.

A smooth rollout of Trump’s order is a challenge to constitutional issues. All that we know is this:

The Department of Education’s activities are what?

The Department oversees the US’s national education policy under the auspices, which are held at the cabinet level. Congress prompted by former Democratic President Jimmy Carter’s 1979 formation.

The department enforces federal education laws pertaining to non-discrimination and civil rights, as well as the Pell Grant, which is provided for low-income students. It also collects data on the US educational system, tracks issues in the system, and enforces federal education laws pertaining to non-discrimination and civil rights.

His administration had been promoting agency attrition even before Trump signed the executive order on Thursday.

The department employs 4, 133 people before Trump was inaugurated. The staff has nearly half-grown since his inauguration, with 600 of the company’s employees voluntarily resigning, and the rest taking administrative leave. The department had roughly 2, 183 employees as of March 11.

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and other federal government-wide workforce cuts are taking place in addition to these job cuts.

What is stated in the executive order?

The phrase “empowering parents, states, and communities: improving educational outcomes” is in the order. It calls on Linda McMahon, a long-term ally of Donald Trump, to help bring the department to a close.

According to the order, closing the department would allow children and their parents to escape “a system that is failing them.”

According to the order, which cites 2024 data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), “The Federal education bureaucracy is not functioning.” According to the data, 72% of eighth-graders had no prior math experience and 70% of them had no reading experience.

How do US students fare?

According to the NAEP’s 2024 report, since 2022, there hasn’t been much of a significant change in how students’ reading and math scores have changed.

Overall, NAEP data reveals that average reading scores for eighth-graders haven’t significantly increased or decreased since the start of the 1970s. Average mathematics scores increased steadily from 1973 until 2012, when they began to decline steadily before gradually increasing until 2024.

The US placed 8th out of 41 nations in terms of educational attainment in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), according to the Better Life Index, which was developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and released in 2020. However, the US placed 19th in terms of student ability. Additionally, the US student averaged higher in reading, literacy, mathematics, and science than the OECD average.

According to the Pew Research Center, the US placed 28th out of 37 OECD nations in math in 2022. In terms of science, the US placed 12th in the same year.

What are Americans’ goals?

58 percent of respondents, across party lines, oppose the Department of Education’s removal, according to a 2024 opinion poll conducted by the national non-profit All4Ed.

In response to Trump’s order, Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, said, “This is political theater, not serious public policy.”

According to Mitchell in a statement released on Thursday, “the administration and Congress should concentrate on improving the important work that the department does that benefits ordinary Americans” and not make any unilateral and careless cuts to the department’s workforce and ability to serve Americans.

What will become of student loans?

Loans and grants will continue to be provided in accordance with Trump’s executive order.

The department’s main source of loans for students in US colleges is. Nearly 43 million student borrowers in the US have an outstanding loan balance of $ 1.69 trillion.

According to the order, “the services, programs, and benefits that Americans rely on will be provided for the effective and uninterrupted delivery of.”

Trump stated on Thursday that these services would be “always be preserved in full and redistributed to a number of other agencies and departments that will take very good care of them.”

Trump has stated that states would overtake most of the department’s responsibilities, though it’s not yet clear how this redistribution will work.

What comes next?

Since only the legislature has the authority to dissolve a cabinet-level department, Trump’s order cannot be implemented without the Congress’s consent.

Some members of Congress have stepped up and said they would back Trump’s decision.

In a press release, Louisiana’s Republican Senator Bill Cassidy said, “I agree with President Trump that the Department of Education has failed to fulfill its mission.”

I will support the President’s objectives by introducing legislation to accomplish this as soon as possible because the Department can only be shut down with the consent of Congress.

Trump might not be able to secure congressional support, though.

The 100-member Senate will need 60 votes to pass the legislation to overthrow the department. Republicans make up the required majority, only 53 of the senators.

Source: Aljazeera