President Donald Trump continued his broad educational agenda while signing an executive order to reduce the White House Education Department on Thursday.
The president’s order orders the Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to take all the necessary measures allowed by law to reduce the Department of Education.
President Donald Trump has an executive order after signing it together with the Secretary of Education of the United States, Linda McMahon (R) in the East Room of the White House in Washington, on March 20, 2025.
Mandel and/AFP
Trump signed the order during a ceremony in the east room of the White House while flanked on each side by schools sitting in the desks.
“Today we take a historical action that was 45 years in process,” he said, and said that his order “will begin to eliminate the Federal Education Department.”
The measure has been months in process and will help the president fulfill his campaign promise to return educational power and decisions to the United States.
President Donald Trump speaks during an educational event and signs Executive Orders in the East Room of the White House in Washington, on March 20, 2025.
Mandel and/AFP
“The Department of Education will be much smaller than what it is today,” said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, to the journalists early on Thursday, noting that the department will not be completely closed and that it will continue to carry out “critical functions.”
“But we do not need to spend more than $ 3 billion over the course of a few decades in an department that is clearly failing to educate our students,” he said.
Trump is ordering McMahon to take “all the necessary measures to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return the education authority to the States,” said the order.
The order also requires the “uninterrupted delivery of services, programs and benefits in which Americans depend.” It is still not clear how the administration plans to achieve that. The sources said the administration has been investigating how to transfer some of the key programs to other agencies.
Republican government Ron Desantis de Florida, Greg Abbott of Texas, Mike Braun de Indiana, Kim Reynolds of Iowa, Jeff Landry of Louisiana and Mike Dewine of Ohio were among the state leaders who attended the signature ceremony.
“We want to return our students to the United States, where only some of the governors are very happy here with this,” Trump said. “They want education to return to them, return to the United States, and they will do a phenomenal job.”
However, several Democrats and Defenders of Education criticized the order.
“This is a red code for each student of public schools, parents and teachers in this country,” said Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. “Trump tells the children of public schools in the United States that their future does not matter. Billionaires such as Trump and Musk will not feel the difference when the programs are cut after school, class sizes go up and help families pay the school. But working families, students and teachers will pay a high price.”
“The closure of the Department of Education will damage millions of children in the public schools of our nation, their working families and teachers,” said the minority of the representatives Chamber, Hakeem Jeffries, in a statement on Thursday. “The Congress created the Department of Education and only an act of Congress can eliminate it. We will stop this evil republican scheme in the House of Representatives and in Courts.”
The member of the classification of the Committee of Education and Labor Force of the House of Representatives, Bobby Scott, D-Virginia, said the order will cause “irreparable damage” to students and educators.
“By dismantling Ed, President Trump is implementing his own philosophy on education that can be summarized in his own words, ‘I love the poorly educated,” he added.
The department took the first steps to reduce the size last week when it dismissed almost half of its employees, and was significantly reduced in size through a massive strength reduction, deferred resignations and retirement purchases, according to the department.
Civil and supporters of the Department of Education are manifested outside the Washington Department, on March 11, 2025.
Jim LO SCALZO/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTO/JIM LO SCALZO/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTO
Trump continues the reforms with his order, committing to erase more personnel in the department.
“I hope you do [be shut down entirely]”Trump said” full measure “with Sharyl Attkisson earlier this month.” You have some people just to make sure [the states are] English teaching, you know, you say reading, writing and arithmetic. “
However, the approval of the Congress is required to abolish a federal agency, and McMahon has acknowledged that it would need Congress to carry out the president’s vision to close the department that has been used to lead. 60 votes “yes” would be needed in the Senate to overcome the filibuster and dismantle the department that Congress created.
Linda McMahon, nominated for President Trump, will be Secretary of Education, testifies to a confirmation hearing of the Senate Health, Labor, Labor and Pensions Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, on February 13, 2025.
Tierney L Cross/Reuters
Critics argue that the department is necessary for vital financial assistance and subsidies programs. Education experts suggested that closing the Department of Education could destroy the financing of public education and disproportionately affect high -need students throughout the country that depend on legitimately authorized programs, such as the Law of Education and Title 1 of people with disabilities, which provides funds for low -income families.
These programs could be housed in a reformed and reduced education department of other agencies, and McMahon said the department will still manage those legal programs in which the students of the disadvantaged environments trust. In an interview in “The Ingraham Angle” by Fox News, McMahon suggested that the “good” employees who manage legally mandatory functions will not be harmed by staff reductions.
“Leaving aside legality, the dismantling of the EDD will exacerbate existing disparities, reduce responsibility and put low -income students, color students, students with disabilities and rural students,” said Scott.
A statement from the department said that “it will continue to deliver all the legal programs that fall in the scope of the agency, including formula funds, student loans, Pell subsidies, financing for special needs students and the creation of competitive subsidies.”
“They will be fully and redistributed to other agencies and departments that will take care of them very well,” Trump said Thursday. “But beyond these basic needs, my administration will take all legal measures to close the department.”
However, some critics pointed out that the department does more than administering the financing of the key programs.
“The department does more than disperse funds,” said the CEO of the agency and defender of public education, Debbie Veney. “It ensures responsibility, enforces civil rights protections and maintains educational standards. Eliminating it would weaken supervision and put millions of students at risk.”
“Instead of dismantling a vital institution, leaders must focus on strengthening educational policies that support students, families and schools,” he added.
President Donald Trump signs an executive order to close the Department of Education, during an event in the East Room of the White House in Washington, on March 20, 2025.
Nathan Howard/Reuters
The National Parent Union also condemned the order as unconstitutional and said that students will suffer the lack of a federal education department.
“Let’s call this what it is: an assault on the future of our children and play chicken with a constitutional crisis with the intentional fire of the Congress authority,” he said in a statement. “This is not fixing education. It ensures that millions of children never have a fair opportunity. And we are not about to let that happen without fighting.”
Even so, some school defenders said Trump’s order was not far enough, with the CEO of the American Federation for Children, Tommy Schultz, saying that Trump “demolished a bureaucratic machine failed in DC.”
“With this executive order, President Trump continues to take measures to fulfill his campaign promises on education, and now is the time for Congress to send a school choice legislation to his desk so he can fulfill his other mandate to voters,” he said. “
President Donald Trump has an executive order after signing it together with the Secretary of Education Linda McMahon (R) in the East of the White House in Washington, on March 20, 2025.
Nathan Howard/Reuters
In more than four decades, Trump and the skeptics of the Department of Education have said that they believe that the agency has had too much expenditure power without achieving results.
After McMahon swore, he stressed that the abolition of the department is based on allowing families to choose a “quality education” so that US students are not “trapped in failed schools.”
“This is also, I would say, a national security problem,” Leavitt added Thursday morning. “When you look at how students around the world, particularly in China, are being educated, American students are staying behind. We do not keep up with our allies or our adversaries, and that is an important problem for our country, and the president is fixing it today.”
After Trump signed the bill, the president of the Committee on Education and Labor Force of the House of Representatives, Tim Walberg, said McMahon “includes the importance of taking out the federal government out of the way.”
“In a nutshell, the Department of Education has failed to deliver results for the students of the United States and today’s actions by the Trump administration will help ensure that the youth of our nation are first,” he added.
