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- President Donald Trump signed an executive order to begin eliminating the Education Department.
- Trump cannot eliminate a federal agency without Congress.
- Still, Trump and some GOP lawmakers have called for axing the department and shifting responsibilities to other agencies.
President Donald Trump has officially introduced his plan to eliminate the Department of Education. It could disrupt student loans, funding for public schools, and measuring students’ achievements in reading and math.
On Thursday, Trump signed an executive order directing his new education secretary, Linda McMahon, to begin the process of eliminating the Department of Education.
He said that “useful functions,” including Pell Grants and Title I funding for low-income districts, will be “fully preserved” but redistributed to other federal agencies.
“But beyond these core necessities,” Trump said, “my administration will take all lawful steps to shut down the department. We’re going to shut it down and shut it down as quickly as possible.”
Shutting down the agency requires congressional approval; while Trump and McMahon are seeking to reduce the agency’s capacity, completely eliminating it would need 60 Senate votes. Sen. Bill Cassidy, chair of the Senate education committee, said in a statement that he will “support the President’s goals by submitting legislation to accomplish this as soon as possible.”
McMahon said during her confirmation hearing that “Trump understands that we’ll be working with Congress” to make changes to the Department of Education.
“We’d like to do this right,” she said. “We’d like to make sure that we are presenting a plan that I think our senators could get on board with.”
Some Republican lawmakers have introduced legislation to abolish the department.
In November, Sen. Mike Rounds put forth a bill to eliminate the department and “redistribute all critical federal programs under other departments.” The bill proposed placing the federal student loans program under the authority of the Treasury Department.
The executive order follows the Department of Education’s recent move to restructure the agency by cutting its workforce in half. On March 11, the department announced it was firing over 1,300 workers, leaving just over 2,000 employees remaining at the agency.
Some advocates have already said they’re prepared to take Trump to court over this executive order. Aaron Ament, president of borrower advocacy group Student Defense, said in a statement that “there’s no Executive Order the President can sign to legally eliminate the Department of Education.”
“We’re already preparing to stop the dismantling of the Department of Education in court,” he said.
What shutting down ED would mean for Americans
The Department of Education primarily facilitates federal funding and research, including billions in funding for the Title I program that provides federal assistance to school districts to help low-income students. It also manages the trillion-dollar student-loan portfolio, along with funding for districts to teach students with disabilities.
Another core component of the Education Department is its research arm, which collects data on kids’ progress on a range of subjects including reading and math. Education experts previously told BI that the data collection is in jeopardy following Trump’s move in February to end $900 million in research contracts.
Some Democratic lawmakers said that gutting the department would have a significant impact on the US education system.
“The staff at the Department provide real services that impact the daily lives of students and their families from enforcing students’ civil rights and providing transparent information on how our schools are doing to processing critical aid such as Pell Grants to helping low-income students all over our nation attend college and further their careers,” Sen. Patty Murray wrote in a recent letter.
The executive order Trump signed delivers on his past statements that the Department of Education should not exist. The president and other Republicans have said that individual states should be in charge of education — even as states already have significant control — and other agencies can take on some of the department’s responsibilities.
This executive order also reflects the goals of the DOGE office — a Trump-created effort unofficially led by Elon Musk that aims to slash government waste. Vivek Ramaswamy, who previously co-led DOGE but has since stepped down, called for eliminating the Department of Education in December following results showing kids’ low reading scores in the US.
Some education policy experts previously told BI there’s little indication that getting rid of the department would be effective in addressing certain education issues, such as low reading scores.
“If it weren’t for the Department of Education, we wouldn’t know” much about reading scores to begin with, said Nat Malkus, a senior fellow and deputy director of education policy at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute.
After getting confirmed, McMahon detailed her plans for a “historic final mission” for the Department of Education, which included goals to center the department’s work on parental rights and removing “divisive DEI” programs from curricula.
“Removing red tape and bureaucratic barriers will empower parents to make the best educational choices for their children,” McMahon said. “An effective transfer of educational oversight to the states will mean more autonomy for local communities. Teachers, too, will benefit from less micromanagement in the classroom—enabling them to get back to basics.”
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