Trump orders plan to dismantle Education Department while keeping some functions

Donald Trump has signed an executive order calling for the dismantling of the US Education Department, advancing a campaign promise to take apart an agency that has been a long-time target of conservatives.

The president has criticised the department as wasteful and polluted by liberal ideology, but completing its dismantling is most likely to be impossible without an act of Congress, which created the department in 1979.

Republicans said they will introduce legislation to achieve that, while Democrats quickly lined up to oppose the idea.

The order says the education secretary will, “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the states and local communities”.

Mr Trump said his administration will close the department beyond its “core necessities”, preserving its responsibilities for funding for low-income schools and money for children with disabilities.

The White House said earlier on Thursday that the department will continue to manage federal student loans, but the order appears to say the opposite. It says the Education Department does not have the staff to oversee its 1.6 trillion dollar (£1.2 trillion) loan portfolio and “must return bank functions to an entity equipped to serve America’s students”.

At a signing ceremony, Mr Trump blamed the department for America’s lagging academic performance and said states will do a better job.

“It’s doing us no good,” he said.

His 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.

Education secretary Linda McMahon said she will remove red tape and empower states to decide what is best for their schools, but she promised to continue essential services and work with states and Congress “to ensure a lawful and orderly transition”.

The measure was celebrated by groups that have long called for an end to the department.

“For decades, it has funnelled billions of taxpayer dollars into a failing system — one that prioritises leftist indoctrination over academic excellence, all while student achievement stagnates and America falls further behind,” said Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation.

“This is a dark day for the millions of American children who depend on federal funding for a quality education, including those in poor and rural communities with parents who voted for Trump,” NAACP president Derrick Johnson said.

Opponents are gearing up for legal challenges, including Democracy Forward, a public interest litigation group. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer called the order a “tyrannical power grab” and “one of the most destructive and devastating steps Donald Trump has ever taken”.

Margaret Spelling, who served as education secretary under Republican president George W Bush, questioned whether whether the department will be able to accomplish its remaining missions, and whether it will ultimately improve schools.

“Will it distract us from the ability to focus urgently on student achievement, or will people be figuring out how to run the train?” she asked.

Ms Spelling said schools have always been run by local and state officials, and rejected the idea that the Education Department and the federal government have been holding them back.

Currently, 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, like school meals and support for homeless students. The agency is also key in overseeing civil rights enforcement.

The Trump administration has not formally spelled out which department functions could be handed off to other departments or eliminated altogether. It has not addressed the fate of other department operations, like its support for for technical education and adult learning, grants for rural schools and after-school programmes, and a federal work-study programme that provides employment to students with financial need.

States and districts already control local schools, including the curriculum, but some conservatives have pushed to cut strings attached to federal money and provide it to states as “block grants” to be used at their discretion.

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.

Republicans have talked about closing the Education Department for decades, saying it wastes 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 has 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 over-extend their reach through guidance and regulation.

Even as he moves to dismantle the department, he has leaned on it to promote elements of his agenda. He has used investigative powers of the Office for Civil Rights and the threat of withdrawing federal education money to target schools and colleges that defy his orders on transgender athletes participating in women’s sports, pro-Palestinian activism and diversity programmes.