[ad_1]
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to “start the removal of the federal department of education.” With his pen strokes, he officially moved plans to close the 46-year-old agency, as he said “once once.”
However, the order does not immediately close the department. This cannot be done without the approval of the council. Rather, according to the text of the order released by the White House, it directs Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to take all necessary steps to promote the Department of Education closure, and return the powers to education to the state and the community, while ensuring effective and uninterrupted benefits of the services, programs and benefits Americans rely on.”
Follow the live politics report here.
At the time of signing, Trump said the federal Pell grants (a common type of federal faculty financial aid), Title I funds and resources and funding for children with disabilities will be “fully preserved and redistributed to various other institutions and departments.”
“But beyond these core needs, my administration will take all legal steps to close the department,” he said, adding that he will do so “as soon as possible.”
The move promises to adhere to key functions the department performs in a broader education system, including monitoring federal student loan portfolio, civil rights enforcement in schools, and distribution of billions of dollars to support students with poverty and disabilities.
Some major questions about the future of the Ministry of Education remain unanswered. However, there is still a considerable amount of information about the agency’s history and duties. There are also many plans conservatives have distributed over decades to unleash the institutions.
What does the Ministry of Education do?
In 1979, Democratic President Jimmy Carter signed a law that made the Department of Education a cabinet-level agency. Up until that point, the government had the Ministry of Health, Education and Human Services created during the Eisenhower administration.
Conservatives have been calling for it to be abolished for over 40 years – essentially since it was created. Carter’s successor, President Ronald Reagan, vowed to close it a year after it opened – and Republicans essentially repeated the call.
The Education Division is one of the smallest cabinet-level divisions. Last year’s $268 billion budget accounted for 4% of the US budget. McMahon announced earlier this month that it plans to cut about half of its agency staff.
Among its most notable duties, the agency manages a $1.6 trillion federal student loan portfolio for university and post-secondary students. It also distributes billions of dollars to funding for K-12 schools through a program that serves more than 50 million students in around 100,000 public schools and 32,000 private schools.
That funding includes over $15 billion in thousands of so-called Title I schools. This is a school that receives federal dollars to support low-income families. It also includes funding for more than $15 billion in programs under the auspices of the Disabled Education Act (IDEA), which provides state grants for the education of children with disabilities.
The Department of Education’s Civil Rights Bureau implements laws aimed at preventing discrimination in schools, while the institution’s Institute of Educational Sciences conducts data collection, statistics and research to monitor student outcomes.
However, the enormous balance of power over education remains in states and local districts that fund most of K-12 education and set all curricula.
The U.S. Department of Education has not spoken about curriculum issues. They have not set school registration and graduation requirements, and have no comments on the selection or use of school or library books, textbooks or resources.
Schools receiving federal money through Title I programs and ideas must meet certain criteria and maintain certain reporting rules. Conservatives have long argued that these requirements have been challenging and that they have pushed for allowing the state to use flexibility and freedom as they wish.
What would it look like to defeat the education department?
While Trump cannot complete the Department of Education itself, McMahon has confirmed that the administration wants to present plans that Congress supports, and has introduced various plans for House Republicans to try to remove the division. Still, with a narrow Republican majority in the House and Senate, it is unlikely to move forward.
But other than that, the administration has other ways to reduce its departmental footprint.
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said “critical programs will be protected” ahead of signing the executive order, specifically that student loans and federal Pell grants will continue to be processed by the department. Additionally, senior administrators said Wednesday night that Title I, student loans and students with disabilities (reliant on the funds of ideas) would not be affected.
However, it remains unclear how existing services will not be disrupted as the agency has been demolished.
Education advocates have long warned that massive cuts will dramatically affect the federal government’s huge student loan portfolio and Title I and Idea funding. For this fund-dependent group, what these cuts mean is one of the biggest questions that pop up after the news first broke that the Trump White House was trying to eliminate the agency.
One possibility is that a new framework for education policy can draw clues from the many plans that have been circulating for decades about how conservative education activists want to see the sector being dismantled. These plans center around transferring key functions of the department to other federal agencies, despite some education experts claiming that Congressional approval is required.
One House bill, introduced in January by Rep. David Rouzer of Rn.C., proposes transferring most of the department’s responsibility to other agencies. Student loan programs, for example, go to the Department of Treasury, to the vocational training programme to the Department of Labor.
The bill also proposes that the federal government will be allowed to fund almost any other education that it offers to states where conditions or reporting requirements are currently attached.
One plan from February, promoted by conservative Manhattan Policy Institute officials, promoted the transfer of public school enforcement issues to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.
Education advocates warn that shifting these responsibilities to the DOJ means that fewer teams will be held more accountable, which will likely result in fewer investigations and less enforcement. The Department of Justice also has the discretion to investigate by the Department of Investigation, and the Department of Education must investigate complaints alleging discrimination within the past 180 days. (The layoffs in the Trump administration’s education department earlier this month had a major impact on the agency’s offices for civil rights.)
The plan also advocated for spinoffs of federal student loan portfolios into independent financial entities.
Meanwhile, Project 2025 promoted the removal of the entire agency, but also advocated for the termination of Title I fundraising in stages. It also proposes to terminate the student debt cancellation program.
Other advocates of conservative education policy say most of the funds the federal government provides to states for its K-12 program should be converted to block grants.
However, public education advocates warn that such changes could allow red states to pour dollars into private schools.
Under several other GOP proposals, Title I funding for the poorest schools will shift to allow poor students to take that money to private schools if they choose.
In February, 12 top education officials from the GOP-controlled state pitched McMahon to fund federal schools as block grants. Republicans said they wanted to be allowed to shift funds to support “state-led initiatives” and “alternative spending approaches,” and asked McMahon to grant exemptions regarding certain federal requirements associated with allocations. Red states usually rely more on federal education funds than blue ones.
Private schools that do not receive federal funding are exempt from the Civil Rights Act, including exemptions from discrimination based on student race, gender, or disability. Private academies also do not need to provide individualized educational plans for children with learning disabilities. It is unclear whether any of the federal civil rights protections overseen by the Department of Education would apply if the state used federal dollars to support private K-12 schools under the proposed block grant scheme.
This story first appeared on nbcnews.com. More from NBC News:
[ad_2]Source link
