US President Donald Trump (left) holds up a signed executive order after signing it an education event at the White House on Thursday, March 20, 2025. Photo: APUnited States President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday that plans to dismantle the federal Department of Education, making good on a long-standing campaign promise to conservatives.
The order would leave school policy almost entirely in the hands of states and local boards, a prospect that alarms liberal education advocates.
The order will “begin to eliminate” the department, Trump said at a signing ceremony in the East Room of the White House.
However, closing the department completely would require an act of Congress, and Trump currently lacks the votes for that.
“We’re going to be returning education, very simply, back to the states where it belongs,” Trump said.
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The order follows the department’s announcement last week that it would lay off nearly half its staff. It is the latest step by Trump, who has been in office for two months, to reshape the US government and upend the federal bureaucracy.
Education has long been political in the United States, with conservatives favouring school choice policies that help private schools. Left-leaning voters largely support programmes and funding for public schools.
Fights about US education accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic, a divide Trump tapped into as a presidential candidate.
Trump has said he wants Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who attended the White House event, to put herself out of a job.
His executive order seeks to reduce the department to basic functions such as administering student loans and resources for children with special needs.
“We’re going to shut it down and shut it down as quickly as possible,” Trump said. “It’s doing us no good.”
Although Republicans control both chambers of Congress, Democratic support would be required to achieve the needed 60 votes in the Senate for such a bill to pass.
Trump was joined at the ceremony by Republican governors, including Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida. Trump also credited the conservative advocacy group Moms for Liberty.
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The education department oversees some 100,000 public and 34,000 private schools in the US, although more than 85 per cent of public school funding comes from state and local governments.
It provides federal grants for needy schools and programmes, including money to pay teachers of children with special needs, fund arts programmes and replace outdated infrastructure.
It also oversees the US$1.6 trillion (HK$12.44 trillion) in student loans held by tens of millions of Americans who cannot afford to pay for university outright.
Ahead of the ceremony, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt cited disappointing literacy levels and testing scores among American children as justification for scaling back the department, which was founded in the 1970s.
Trump has acknowledged that he would need buy-in from lawmakers and teachers’ unions to fulfil his campaign pledge of fully closing the department. He does not have it.
“See you in court,” the head of the American Federation of Teachers union, Randi Weingarten, said in a statement.
US Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat, said in a statement: “Donald Trump knows perfectly well he can’t abolish the Department of Education without Congress – but he understands that if you fire all the staff and smash it to pieces, you might get a similar, devastating result.”
Trump has also delivered broadsides against higher education in the United States by reducing funding and taking on diversity, equity and inclusion policies at colleges and universities, just as he has in the federal government.
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Most of the American public does not support closing the federal education department.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll found last month that respondents opposed shuttering the Department of Education by roughly two to one – 65 per cent to 30 per cent. The Reuters/Ipsos poll, which was conducted online and nationwide, surveyed 4,145 US adults, and its results had a margin of error of about 2 percentage points.
Federal aid accounts for 15 per cent of all K-12 (kindergarten to 12th grade, the equivalent of primary and secondary school) revenue in states that voted for Trump in the 2024 election, compared with 11 per cent of revenue in states that voted for his Democratic rival Kamala Harris, according to a Reuters analysis of Census Bureau data.
Two programmes administered by the Department of Education – aid for low-income schools and pupils with special needs – are the largest of those federal aid programmes.