By Ben Steutermann
On Friday, March 21, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the closure of the Department of Education. He later told the press “I think the states will be…running the Department of Education very soon.” The question on everybody’s mind is very simple: why?
Before we explore that, it is important to mention the president cannot close any department or government institution via executive order. Congress must vote on whether or not to officially close the department, but the President and the Department’s director, Linda McMahon, can all but shutter it through other means. Now, to the original question: Why?
The answer, believe it or not, is an attempt to fix test scores and save money in one fell swoop. Since the Department of Education was created in the 1970s, we have spent 2 trillion dollars on public education and our children have become stupider as a result. About one-third of American children today are proficient at math and read at their grade level. That is abhorrent. Shockingly, Black students had better performance scores during the Jim Crow era than they do today.
On the back of this has come a wave of fear-mongering; that Trump is firing teachers, that kids will not have any lunches, and things of that nature. Firstly, the reduction in manpower is by about 50%, cutting from around 4,200 staff to 2,100. In line with this Administration’s values, most of these are DEI related hires such as diversity officers, and other administrative roles, not teachers and janitors. These administration jobs have a higher growth rate than students and teachers, and a majority make over six figures.
The Department of Education chiefly makes money from congressional grants, who collect money from you and I every paycheck. Instead of the money going from us, to the feds, to the DoE, to the schools the DoE chooses to fund, the money will instead go to the state of Kentucky, who will fund the schools. Plus, the state of Kentucky has more investment in making Kentucky schools better than a bureaucrat in an office in D.C.
But without the DoE how will poor students be fed? How will I get my scholarship? Well, the legacy media outlets have been lax on giving us that information. The truth is, the Department of Health and Human Services will be handling student nutrition programs. The Treasury Department will assume the role of giving out scholarships and things like Pell grants, and the Small Business Administration will take over student loans. The claims that the Trump administration is trying to make kids dumber are lies to fear-monger. It’s akin to saying disbanding a Home Owners Association will mean everybody has to sell their houses. That’s not how these things work.
When you look at the numbers, the Department of Education has failed. Public schools have a much worse level of education than private schools, to the point it’s a common joke about Americans. We spend the most per pupil in the world and aren’t even in the top thirty of education because of it.
Previous administrations — both Democrat and Republican — have treated the DoE like a bureaucratic money pit instead of actually finding the problems within and solving them. Simply throwing money at the problem does nothing. DOGE and the Trump Administration is keeping the government at large accountable for where money goes and how it is used. Fixing the American Education system is a hard job. It will take decades to course-correct, but properly educating the next generation of the greatest country on Earth is worth a few growing pains.
