President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday directing Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education” and return education to individual states across the country.
Trump signed the executive order on Thursday while surrounded by young students. The executive order states, “The Secretary of Education shall, 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 while ensuring the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”
Prior to signing Thursday’s executive order targeting the Department of Education, Trump explained that his administration would be returning education to the states “where it belongs” and suggested that education will probably cost half as much under the direction of individual states and “will be maybe many, many times better.”
In Thursday’s executive order, Trump said the Department of Education was established by Congress in 1979 amid pressure from former President Jimmy Carter.
“Since then, the Department of Education has entrenched the education bureaucracy and sought to convince America that Federal control over education is beneficial,” Trump stated in his executive order. “While the Department of Education does not educate anyone, it maintains a public relations office that includes over 80 staffers at a cost of more than $10 million per year.”
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Trump emphasized on Thursday that after 45 years, the United States spends “more on education by far than any other country” and spends “more money per pupil than any other country.” However, despite spending more money on education than other countries, Trump said the U.S. ranks “near the bottom of the list in terms of success.”
Trump highlighted current statistics, claiming that 70% of eighth graders in the U.S. “are not proficient in either reading or in math,” while 40% of fourth graders “lack even basic reading skills.”
“Despite these breathtaking failures, the department’s discretionary budget has exploded by 600 percent in a very short period of time and employs bureaucrats in buildings all over Washington, DC,” Trump added.
According to The Post Millennial, despite taking steps to dismantle the Department of Education, Trump confirmed on Thursday that Title I funding, Pell grants, and resources dedicated to students with special needs and disabilities will be “preserved in full and redistributed to various other agencies and departments that will take very good care of them.”