United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday, March 20, 2025, directing his staff to take steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education, restoring constitutional order and phasing out a federal agency that has returned poor results at high cost to taxpayers and American children.
The document also directs the DOE to divest itself of its student loan portfolio, which amounts to $1.6 trillion. “The Department of Education is not a bank, and it must return bank functions to an entity equipped to serve America’s students,” it states. However, President Trump promised such federal programs as Title I funding of low-income schools will be “preserved in full and redistributed to various other agencies and departments.”
Americans can “completely eliminate the Department of Education, while at the same time maintaining the protections for students that the federal government can provide,” Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council, told “Washington Watch” on Thursday. “It will mean even more money going to states, not less money, because we won’t have that cut off the top from here in Washington.”
Conservatives and pro-family advocates praised the Department of Education’s long-sought closure. “It’s time to close it and unleash the amazing potential of parents, state, and local governments,” said the Family Research Council.
Trump’s executive order brings to an end the federal government’s 60-year experiment in top-down educational control. Even New Deal liberal Franklin Delano Roosevelt published a 1943 document from the U.S. Constitution Sesquicentennial Commission, which asked, “Where, in the Constitution, is there mention of education?” It answered, “There is none; education is a matter reserved for the states.” Only with Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) did the U.S. government begin meaningfully funding, and directing, local education.
