Why is Trump dismantling the Department of Education – and what’s next?
United States President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education in a bid to deliver on a campaign promise.
The department has long been pilloried by conservatives who argued that education should remain under state control and the department is polluted by liberal ideas.Constitutional challenges stand in the way of a smooth rollout of Trump’s order on Thursday. Here is all we know:
What does the Department of Education do?
The department is a cabinet-level agency that oversees the national education policy of the US. It was formed in 1979 by Congress, prompted by former Democratic President Jimmy Carter.
The department distributes federal loans and aid for education, including the Pell Grant, which benefits low-income university students; collects data on the US education system; identifies issues in the system; and enforces federal education laws pertaining to nondiscrimination and civil rights.
Even before Trump signed the executive order, his administration had been driving attrition in the agency.Before Trump was inaugurated, the department had 4,133 workers. Since his inauguration on January 20, its staff has been nearly halved with 600 employees voluntarily resigning while the rest were placed on administrative leave. As of March 11, there were roughly 2,183 workers in the department.
The job cuts are happening alongside workforce cuts across the federal government led by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
What does the executive order say?
The order is called Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities. It calls on long-term Trump ally and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to facilitate the department’s closure.
The order says closing the department would give children and their parents a chance to escape “a system that is failing them”.“The Federal education bureaucracy is not working,” the order says, citing 2024 data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The data showed 70 percent of eighth graders were below proficient in reading and 72 percent were below proficient in mathematics.
How are students in the US performing?
NAEP’s report showed there has not been a significant change in how students have been scoring on reading and mathematics since 2022.
More broadly, NAEP data shows that since the early 1970s, average scores for reading for eighth graders have not significantly increased or decreased. From 1973, average mathematics scores rose steadily until 2012, after which they saw a slight dip and steadily decreased before picking up a little in 2024.
