Trump signs order to break apart education department

President Donald Trump yesterday signed an order aimed at “eliminating” the Department of Education, delivering a longanticipated political win for conservatives who’ve pushed to privatise education.

- ANDREW FEINBERG & ARIANA BAIO

Flanked by schoolchildren at desks, Mr Trump signed the order during an East Room ceremony attended by multiple Republican governors and activists who celebrated the move, including education secretary Linda McMahon, who the president pointedly said he hopes is the last person to hold the position.

Mr Trump claimed President Jimmy Carter’s decision to sign legislation creating the department had faced widespread opposition and insisted poor test scores among US schoolchildren proved critics right.

“Students in our public elementary and middle schools score worse in reading today than when the department opened, by a lot,” he said, adding that the department’s budget has nonetheless “exploded by 600 per cent” to include “bureaucrats in buildings all over Washington”.

Mr Trump also lauded his administration for having slashed the department’s workforce by half since taking office. But – in an apparent nod to the legal pushback his order will inevitably face – he insisted “the department's useful functions” would be “fully preserved,” including “Pell Grants, Title One funding resources for Children with disabilities and special needs” remaining in place.

“But beyond these core necessities, 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. It's doing us no good,” he said.

Of course, the department – like all cabinet departments – is a creation of Congress, and only an act of Congress can formally shutter it.