President Donald Trump signed an executive order to begin dismantling the Department of Education.
“Today, we take a very historic action that was forty-five years in the making,” Trump said ahead of the signing. “In a few moments, I will sign an executive order to begin eliminating the federal Department of Education once and for all.”
“We’re going to be returning education, very simply, back to the states where it belongs,” he said, adding that the action is a “common sense thing to do.”
“Probably the cost will be half, and the education will be maybe many, many times better,” Trump said.
“I want to just make one little personal statement: Teachers, to me, are among the most important people in this country — and we’re going to take care of our teachers,” Trump noted. “I don’t care if they’re in the union or not in the union, that doesn’t matter. But we’re going to take care of our teachers and I believe the states will take actually better care of them than they are taken care of right now.”
“We’re going to love and cherish our teachers along with our children, and they’re going to work with the parents, and they’re going to work with everybody else, and it’s going to be an amazing thing to watch,” he said.
Congressional approval is needed to completely abolish the Department of Education. “I hope they’re going to be voting for it, because ultimately it may come before them, Trump said of Democrats in Congress.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Thursday that the department “will be much smaller than it is today.”
“When it comes to student loans and Pell grants, those will still be run out of the Department of Education. But we don’t need to be spending more than $3 trillion over the course of a few decades on a department that’s clearly failing in its initial intention to educate our students,” she said.
Trump was surrounded by students during the signing.
The order states that the “Secretary of Education shall, to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities while ensuring the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”
