Donald Trump will sign an executive order today that provides for the dissolution of the federal Department of Education, American media reported yesterday Wednesday, a decision that many conservatives are anticipating and strongly supporting.
A Republican concern for decades, this decision also falls within the Trump administration's declared desire to cut central government spending.
The order requires Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education,” according to media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and Politico.
Some key programs are expected to be spared, however, such as those that provide scholarships to students and funds to low-income educational institutions in the country, according to several media reports.
Trump had promised during the election campaign that he would get rid of the Department of Education and transfer its resources to the states, which already have most of the responsibilities in this area.
Linda McMahon, the former head of the largest company that organizes catfights in the US, was named Secretary of Education by Trump with the mission of "putting herself out of work," as the tycoon put it.
In the first step towards its dissolution, the ministry announced last Tuesday, March 11, the dismissal of almost half of its staff.
The Department of Education, which was established in 1979 under President Jimmy Carter, cannot legally be completely dismantled unless a law is passed with a 60-seat supermajority in the Senate — where President Trump's Republicans currently hold 53 seats.
The federal government has a limited role in the U.S. education system, primarily in financing and organizing it. But its subsidies play a crucial role, especially for schools in economically and socially disadvantaged areas, as well as for students who are struggling.
The effort to abolish the Department of Education is being met with anger by Democrats, teachers' unions and many parents, who see it as an unprecedented attack on public education, accompanied by an attempt to promote conservative ideas.
A similar initiative to dismantle the federal agency for international development assistance, USAID, was declared "possibly" unconstitutional by a federal court the day before Tuesday.
Even before it was signed, the executive order was being challenged by a group of Democratic state attorneys general, who filed a lawsuit to prevent the dissolution of the department and to reverse the layoffs of thousands of its employees.
The NAACP, a powerful civil and civil rights organization, also spoke out against the plan, which it described as unconstitutional, calling it a "black day" for millions of children in the US, who "depend on federal funding to have a quality education, especially in poor or rural communities, with parents who may have voted for Trump," as its president, Derrick Johnson, emphasized.
Source: protothema
