Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said Thursday President Trump is committed to using legal measures to dismantle the Department of Education.
“I think he was correct in saying that we were going to do everything legally. That’s what he has said to me from the very beginning,” McMahon said during an evening appearance on Fox News’s “Special Report” with Bret Baier.
“He would like for me to move as swiftly as we can because he believes the sooner that we can close the department, the more efficiently we can have funds distributed to the states, and perhaps they will even have more funding when there isn’t the overhead on bureaucracy from the Department of Education,” she added.
Trump signed a Thursday executive order seeking to pull apart the functions of the department, the brainchild of late President Jimmy Carter.
“Closing the Department of Education would provide children and their families the opportunity to escape a system that is failing them. Today, American reading and math scores are near historical lows,” Trump wrote.
“This year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that 70 percent of 8th graders were below proficient in reading, and 72 percent were below proficient in math. The Federal education bureaucracy is not working,” he added.
However, White House officials have confirmed they will wait for Congressional approval before the department goes de facto.
“I want Congress to be a partner in this. And I believe they will be, because both sides of the aisle know that what is happening to education in our country cannot be allowed to stand because we are failing our students,” McMahon told Baier.
Republicans hold the majority in both the House and the Senate and could gain the votes needed to approve the department’s closure. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) has already promised to introduce legislation regarding the fulfillment of the executive order while President Trump has promised to reassign Title I funds and Pell Grants to other agencies for oversight.
His efforts follow that of former President Ronald Reagan, who first aimed to dismantle the department in 1981 but later settled for large cuts to the federal education budget.
Trump said the Department of Education’s closure would rid the nation of “federal bureaucracy” while Carter originally said creating the oversight would accomplish the same goal.
“Instead of setting a strong administrative model, the Federal structure has contributed to bureaucratic buck passing. Instead of stimulating needed debate of educational issues, the Federal Government has confused its role of junior partner in American education with that of silent partner,” Carters said when signing the Department of Education bill into law.
‘The time has passed when the Federal Government can afford to give second-level, part-time attention to its responsibilities in American education.”
The former president sought to standardize education across the country. Congress signed off on the Department of Education’s creation to ensure “access to equal educational opportunity for every individual.”
