President Donald Trump is expected to take the extraordinary step this week of ordering his Secretary of Education to dissolve the United States Department of Education by executive order, according to sources familiar with a draft.
A draft of the Executive Order calls the Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to facilitate a closure of the department taking all the necessary measures “allowed by law”, said the sources.
Linda McMahon testifies to the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on its nomination to be Secretary of Education in Capitol Hill in Washington, on February 13, 2025.
Tierney L. Cross/Reuters
However, such a measure would require the approval of the Congress; Any proposed legislation would probably fail without 60 votes from the Senate.
McMahon has previously acknowledged that Congress would need to carry out the president’s vision to close the department that has been used to lead.
“We would like to do this well,” he said during his confirmation hearing last month, adding: “That certainly requires an action of Congress.”
The measure has been months in development, helping the president to focus a step closer to fulfilling his campaign promise to return education to the United States.
The draft is clear about the need to do so, the sources said.
“The federal bureaucratic cellar on education must end,” said a draft of the president’s executive order, according to those familiar with the document. “The main functions of the Department of Education can and should be returned to the United States.”
McMahon is also forced by the draft to assign federal funds for educational programs subject to a rigorous compliance with the Law of Law and Administration.
“The experiment to control US education through federal programs and dollars, and the inexplicable bureaucrats of these programs and the support of dollars have failed in our children, our teachers and our families,” said the draft, according to Fuentes.
However, critics argued that the department provides vital financial assistance and subsidies programs. Make schools accounts for enforcing the laws of non -discrimination for gender, race and disability, specifically, title IX, Title VI and the 1973 Rehabilitation Law and the Law of Americans with disabilities.
Closing the agency “would really paralyze the ability to function and help the support that these students need to succeed from an academic point of view,” said ABC News, vice president of associations and participation in the defense group The Education Trust.
Education experts suggested that closing the Emergency Department could destroy the financing of public education and disproportionately impact high -need students throughout the country that depend on legally authorized programs, such as the Law of Education and Title I of people with disabilities, which provides funds for low -income families.
The end of the department could also leave billions of dollars in funds, scholarships and subsidies that hang in balance for millions of students in the United States.
The draft also instructed any program or activity that received federal funds to “finish” its initiatives for diversity, equity and inclusion, citing concerns about discrimination based on race and sex.
The headquarters of the Department of Education is seen in Washington, DC, February 14, 2025.
Francis Chung/Politician through AP
The circulation of the draft occurs a few days after the agency launched Enddei.ed.gov, a website that allows users to send complaints focused on discrimination and aims to strictly enforce the civil rights law of Title VI in schools.
The current version of the Executive Order increased educational spending that does not correlate with adequate results in exams such as the National Evaluation of Educational Progress, which has been called “the Nation’s qualifications ballot,” the sources said.
Meanwhile, he ordered McMahon to return the decision -making authority to parents and families to improve “education, well -being and future success” of the children of the nation.
McMahon’s allies believe that their experience as CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment will help it be a change agent, a switch and the dismantler that the department needs.
In an email from the entire department on Monday, the newly jury secretary said that his final mission is to make a “historical review” of the agency that cuts the bureaucracy and restores the American education system.
“My vision is aligned with that of the president: send education to the United States and train all parents to choose an excellent education for their children,” said McMahon’s memorandum.
Dozens of employees have already been placed on a paid administrative license, pressured to withdraw or fired in the first months of Trump’s second mandate.
