President Donald Trump’s much-telegraphed executive order calling for effectively closing the U.S. Department of Education and transferring oversight to states drew rebukes from state and federal legislators Thursday.
In the order Trump wrote that closing the department would “provide children and their families the opportunity to escape a system that is failing them.” He cited National Assessment of Educational Progress scores that showed 70% of eighth-graders were below proficient in reading and 72% were below proficient in math.
“The Department of Education has entrenched the education bureaucracy and sought to convince America that Federal control over education is beneficial,” Trump wrote in his order. “While the Department of Education does not educate anyone, it maintains a public relations office that includes over 80 staffers at a cost of more than $10 million per year.”
However, Trump’s order stops short of immediately closing the department, which was created by Congress in 1980 as a Cabinet level agency. According to U.S. law the closure of any federal agency created by Congress can only be closed by an act of Congress.
Soon after Trump’s announcement the leader of MomsRising, an online and on-the-ground organization of more than 1 million mothers and families, blasted the president’s decision.
“It was frankly stomach-churning this afternoon to see President Trump and his Republican cronies celebrating an Executive Order that will cause grave and irreparable harm to our children,” said Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, executive director and CEO of MomsRising. “There is nothing to celebrate about an Order that guts the education system we rely on to prepare them to contribute to our economy and our society. Today’s Executive Order will undermine the success of our students and the viability of our workforce, now and for years to come.
“America’s moms know that gutting staff and dismantling the U.S. Department of Education is part of the Trump administration’s grand scheme to redirect the funds currently used to educate our kids to instead line the pockets of greedy billionaires like Elon Musk. We object, and we reject the twisted values and skewed priorities that underlie this action.”
U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, who represents most of Fairfield County, called the president’s actions a crusade against public education.
“The latest casualty in Trump’s crusade against the federal government is public education,” Himes said. “By signing an unconstitutional executive order to dismantle the federal Department of Education, the President has taken direct aim at students across this country, effectively trying to deny them the resources they need to achieve future stability and prosperity.
“Here in Southwestern Connecticut, federal education funding benefited 107,792 school children. Those kids stand to receive a worse education because of Trump’s actions. The detrimental effect of the President’s decision will be felt for generations and I am furious that it is our country’s youngest who have to carry that burden.”
Gov. Ned Lamont and Lt. Gov. Nancy Bysiewicz joined the chorus of critics of Trump’s action Thursday.
“The president’s executive order threatens the strength and stability of our public schools by undermining the federal government’s role in supporting education,” Lamont said. “Programs like Title I, IDEA, Pell Grants, and Impact Aid are essential to ensuring that all students have access to a high-quality education, regardless of their family’s income.”
Bysiewicz was “disturbed” by order to have new Education Secretary Linda McMahon of Greenwich follow out his orders.
“The President’s executive order is deeply disturbing,” Bysiewicz said. “The Department of Education provides vital resources and funding to schools across the country, particularly in our most vulnerable communities. The executive order hurts every one of Connecticut’s 500,000 K-12 public school students and the 60,000 students who depend on Pell Grants to pursue higher education. Especially at a time when we have numerous open jobs, we need to do everything we can to support a talented and highly skilled workforce.”
In his executive order Trump alludes to the privatization of the federal student loan program by some of the country’s largest banks. It states that the closure of the Department of Education would drastically improve program implementation in higher education. He further states that it oversees a student loan debt portfolio of more than $1.6 trillion, which is largely the size of one of the nation’s largest banks, Wells Fargo.
“But although Wells Fargo has more than 200,000 employees, the Department of Education has fewer than 1,500 in its Office of Federal Student Aid,” Trump wrote. “The Department of Education is not a bank, and it must return bank functions to an entity equipped to serve America’s students.”
