March 19 (UPI) — President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order on Thursday that will close the Department of Education though Congress needs to sign off on it, media outlets reported Wednesday.
Trump has vowed to eliminate the agency and Education Secretary Linda McMahon was hired to “put herself out of a job” in the smallest federal agency with only 4,245 employees before the workforce was cut in half last month.
Trump will be at an event at the White House to sign the order directing 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,” according to information obtained by NBC News and USA Today.
Although the Senate and House must approve the closure of the agency, the Trump administration could restrict the agency’s work.
McMahon recently reduced the size of the Education Department by half. She said the job terminations were the first step toward shutting down the agency.
“That was the President’s mandate,” McMahon said last week in an interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News. “His directive to me, clearly, is to shut down the Department of Education, which we know we’ll have to work with Congress, you know, to get that accomplished.”
During her confirmation hearing in February, she said, “We’d like to do this right,” adding the agency “clearly could not be shut down without” Congress.
The Senate vote during her confirmation was 51-45 with all Democrats voting against and every Republican backing her. Two Republicans and two Democrats didn’t vote.
National Education Association President Becky Pringle criticized the planned executive order.
“If successful, Trump’s continued actions will hurt all students by sending class sizes soaring, cutting job training programs, making higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle class families, taking away special education services for students with disabilities and gutting student civil rights protections,” Pringle said in a statement.
She accused Trump and Elon Musk, who heads the Department of Government Efficiency, of ramming “their wrecking ball at public schools and the futures of the 50 million students in rural, suburban and urban communities across America to pay for tax handouts for billionaires.”
The plan is to shift much of the department’s duties to the states, where curricula is determined, as well as other agencies.
“Your state is going to control your children’s education. We’re moving it out of Washington immediately,” Trump said at a campaign event last year in Saginaw, Mich. “We’re going to do that very fast, and it’s going to be great.”
Trump told reporters in the White House on March 6 that student loans would be brought under the Treasury Department, Commerce Department or the Small Business Administration.
The $268 billion appropriations in the department last year represented 4% of the U.S. budget.
The agency administers federal funding for K-12 schools, including through Title I for students in lower-income communities and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
Schools have been forced to comply with the Trump administration’s demands to halt diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which have been challenged in court. In addition, employees, like in other agencies, have been terminated or applied for a buyout.
Last week, the Education Department announced investigations into more than 50 universities it accused of “engaging in race-exclusionary practices in their graduate programs.”
The Education Department was created in 1979 under the Jimmy Carter administration as a result of a spinoff from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, which also resulted in the Department of Health and Human Services.
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