U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon leaves the House Chamber after President Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress on Tuesday.
Jose Luis Magana/AP/FR159526 AP
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Jose Luis Magana/AP/FR159526 AP
President Trump is expected to issue an executive action as early as Thursday calling on Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education,” according to a draft of the action obtained by NPR.
The move has been expected since early February, when the White House revealed its intentions but withheld the action itself until after McMahon’s Senate confirmation.
The Senate voted Monday to make McMahon the next education secretary. Democrats uniformly opposed her after McMahon publicly committed to unwinding the department.
The draft action instructs McMahon to act “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law,” an acknowledgement that the department and its signature responsibilities were created by Congress, are protected by statute and cannot legally be altered without congressional approval, which would almost certainly require 60 votes to overcome a Democratic filibuster.
News of the action was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The order offers as justification for the department’s closure that, “since its founding in 1979, the Department of Education has spent more than $1 trillion without producing virtually any improvement in student reading and mathematics scores.”
According to The Nation’s Report Card, one of the oldest and most reliable barometers of student achievement in the U.S., reading scores changed little between 1992 and 2019, though math achievement improved considerably. The pandemic though wrought havoc on student achievement, with many learning gaps remaining nearly five years after schools first closed.
