Trump orders a plan to dismantle the Education Department while keeping some core functions Today World News

President Donald Trump signs an executive order in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Thursday, March 20, 2025.
| Photo Credit: AP

U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday (March 20, 2025) calling for the dismantling of the U.S. Education Department, advancing a campaign promise to take apart an agency that’s been a longtime target of conservatives.

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Mr. Trump has derided the Education Department as wasteful and polluted by liberal ideology. However, completing its dismantling is most likely impossible without an act of Congress, which created the department in 1979. Republicans said they will introduce a bill to achieve that.

The department, however, is not set to close completely. The White House said the department will retain certain critical functions.

Mr. Trump said his administration will close the department beyond its “core necessities,” preserving its responsibilities for Title I funding for low-income schools, Pell Grants and money for children with disabilities. The White House said earlier it would also continue to manage federal student loans.

The president 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 at a White House ceremony.

Already, Mr. Trump’s Republican administration has 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.

Advocates for public schools said eliminating the department would leave children behind in an American education system that is fundamentally unequal.

“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.

Democrats said the order will be fought in the courts and in Congress, and they urged Republicans to join them in opposition.

Mr. Trump’s order is “dangerous and illegal” and will disproportionately hurt low-income students, students of colour and those with disabilities, said Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

The department “was founded in part to guarantee the enforcement of students’ civil rights,” Mr. Scott said. “Champions of public school segregation objected, and campaigned for a return to ‘states’ rights.’”

Supporters of Mr. Trump’s vision for education welcomed the order.

“No more bloated bureaucracy dictating what kids learn or stifling innovation with red tape,” Tiffany Justice, co-founder of Moms for Liberty, said on social media. “States, communities, and parents can take the reins — tailoring education to what actually works for their kids.”

The White House has not spelled out formally which department functions could be handed off to other departments or eliminated altogether.

The department sends billions of dollars a year to schools and oversees $1.6 trillion in federal student loans.

Currently, much of the agency’s work revolves around managing money — both its extensive student loan portfolio and a range of aid programs for colleges and school districts, like school meals and support for homeless students. The agency also is key in overseeing civil rights enforcement.

States and districts already control local schools, including 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. Block granting has raised questions about vital funding sources including Title I, the largest source of federal money to America’s K-12 schools. Families of children with disabilities have despaired over what could come of the federal department’s work protecting their rights.

Federal funding makes up a relatively small portion of public school budgets — roughly 14%. The money often supports supplemental programs for vulnerable students, such as the McKinney-Vento program for homeless students or Title I for low-income schools.

Colleges and universities are more reliant on money from Washington, through research grants along with federal financial aid that helps students pay their tuition.

Republicans have talked about closing the Education Department for decades, saying it wastes taxpayer 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.

In his platform, Mr. Trump promised to close the department “and send it back to the states, where it belongs.” Mr. Trump has cast the department as a hotbed of “radicals, zealots and Marxists” who overextend their reach through guidance and regulation.