Penna Dexter

President Trump has signed an executive order directing U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to dismantle the Department of Education. The order recognizes the fact that the administration cannot shut down the department on its own. Congress must be involved.

However, there is much the secretary can do to begin the process of closing the agency. She is quickly proceeding to slash the Department of Education’s staff by half, eliminating 1,950 positions. She has ended some of the department’s smaller programs, including its research arm. She has scaled back the Office for Civil Rights.

The Department of Education carries $1.6 billion in student debt on its books. The Wall Street Journal’s Kim Strassel figures that this would make it the nation’s fifth largest bank. The program has become an entitlement and is ripe for reform. President Trump has suggested it be managed by the Small Business Administration or the Treasury or Commerce Department.

Secretary McMahon points out that test scores have been falling since the department was formed in 1979. She frames the task of shutting down the department as her “final mission.”

In a column, The Journal’s Kim Strassel says, “never has a department been more deceptively titled.“ The reality is, “Our federal education bureaucracy takes no part in the daily, hard-fought grind of teaching.”

“The department’s only job,” she continues, “is to act as the keeper of the education treats.” The agency hands out about $80 billion per year to get school districts to comply with its directives, one of the most recent of which was Former President Biden’s transgender requirements.

Until Congress sees fit to close the Department of Education, reform-minded governors should be tapped for expertise. Funding should be in the form of block grants to states and school districts, removing the conditions on how these funds are spent. Better yet, authority over how children are educated should fall to parents through school choice.