President Trump’s interest in closing the Department of Education was never front and center in none of the White House campaigns, but his explanation for the closure of the organization has always remained consistent.
“Move it back to the states,” Mr Trump told his third month as a candidate in 2015. In the last days of the 2024 race, he told supporters: “Your state is going to control your children’s education.”
Very little control of education has ever lived with the federal government, which is mainly responsible for the management of college loans and the imposition of civil rights in schools. However, Mr Trump again developed the back-to-the-states paddock when he signs an executive mandate on March 20 to close the section. The title of the mandate was: “Improvement of educational results by reinforcing parents, states and communities”.
Missing has long been a politician telephone card from the conservative institution that supports a smaller federal government and more local control and is now a central dose of Trump’s second administration when it comes to many issues, from the regulations of abortion and cutting duties. However, states are not necessarily arranged to reproduce the supervision functions played by the federal government, especially in education.
Mr Trump used the tactic during the 2024 presidential struggle to bypass questions about abortion rights by saying that states should decide the issue – a particularly unstable move after stacked the Supreme Court with conservative judges to overthrow ROE.
More recently, Mr Trump and others in his administration have pushed the elimination of the Federal Emergency Management Service, saying that states will do a better job. The move seems to ignore the organization’s basic principle that the optimal practice for disaster relief is “locally executed, state management and federal support”.
The push rings familiar with the conservatives who worked to cut the federal government since the 1970s under the umbrella of the “new federalism” promoted by the Nixon administration. This initiative, which was expanded by the Reagan administration, transferred many social and political programs to states, a move that scholars said was often rooted in an attempt to disrupt an alliance of civil rights between the federal government and black communities.
But Mr Trump’s boldest attempt to use states as a political heat shield is his attempt to close the Department of Education, possibly the most important shift in the role of the federal government to nation schools since the time of civil rights.
The dominant role of the federal department, since it was founded in 1979, was to manage the financial assistance of the college, to oversee research on education, to impose political rights in schools and to help support students with low -income disabilities. Trump’s administration has proposed to shift some of these functions to other federal organizations – for example, to move student loans to small business administration and support students with disabilities at the Ministry of Health and Human Services.
Other functions, such as research, have basically dissolved as the government attributes workers. A right -wing plan for Trump administration, known as Project 2025, called for some federal funding for low -income students to spend on private schools, although it is not clear whether Mr Trump will follow this Playbook.
As Mr Trump seems to be responsible for some of the most pressing and provocative issues of the nation, state officials are deeply divided into change.
“This is an overall shell game,” said Gov. Maura Healey of Massachusetts, Democrat. “It’s all about shifting responsibility and cost from the federal government to states that are in no way to bring these expenses.”
Republican rulers, on the other hand, have generally been aligned behind the president to support the move, including Governor Ron Desantis of Florida, Governor Kim Reynolds of Iowa and Governor Mike Dewine, Ohio. All three traveled to Washington to watch Mr Trump sign an executive mandate on March 20 to begin disassembling the department.
“Every student, family and community is different,” Mr Dewine said in a statement. “By giving states more power in education, we will have the flexibility to focus our efforts on adapting an educational experience that is better for our children.”
In Virginia, Governor Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, also remained supportive of Mr Trump. However, he asked the legislators to double the size of the state’s emergency fund to about $ 600 million to support a possible economic downturn, after Trump’s administration moved to reduce tens of thousands of jobs from the federal workforce.
The justification is aimed at some of the key Republican voters. During Mr Trump’s latest campaign, he returned the section into a political punching bag to calm the growing movement of “parents’ rights” on its conservative base.
Mr Trump’s ambition to abolish the department has also been complicated with the wider policy of the agenda to disassemble the initiatives of diversity, justice and integration into the federal government.
How much power and decision -making will be able to deliver to the communities remain unclear.
Public education control is already mainly based on states and local areas, which produce about 90 % of all school funding. State and local officials set teachers’ salaries and choose which manuals they will use. States also manage standard tests, define academic standards and determine what it can and cannot be taught. In Florida, for example, the state’s “Stop Woke Act” has banned the teaching of certain aspects of history.
Decisions on how much money will be spent on education, what can these funds be spent and if families can use these dollars for private school or domestic education are determined by states.
The federal law also explicitly prohibits Washington from prescribing studies, library resources, manuals and other influence measures. This law existed before Mr Trump first took control of the White House in 2017.
Even Mr. Trump’s description of the Department of Education as “Mass Majesty” is misleading.
The workforce of the section of 4,133 men and women at the beginning of the year is ranked in the last place among 15 executive services at the level of cabinet. Some public high schools have more registered students than the Department of Education had employees.
Mr Trump has denounced it as a failed experiment by highlighting reduced mathematics and reading the scores that even the previous democratic administration has destroyed as “frightening and unacceptable”. It has not explained how the ending of the role of the federal government in public education will increase the adequacy of students.
Instead, even when moving to close the department, the new Trump’s administration policies seem to have disappeared the importance of the mantra of the president of the return of power to the states.
Trump’s administration this week has opened surveys in entire state school systems in California and Maine, both states directed by Democratic rulers who have openly criticized Mr Trump’s policies. Investigations are aimed at policies aimed at protecting transsexual students’ safety for undesirable disclosures to their parents.
The detectors began a few days after Mr Trump’s signature during an event for television at the White House, where he repeated five times his interest in strengthening states making the best decisions for their students.
“We will return the education, very simply, back to the states where it belongs,” he said.
Sarah mervosh They contributed reports.
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