EDITORIAL: Trump delivering on Education Department promise

The Trump administration is moving forward with efforts to neuter the Department of Education. The move couldn’t come fast enough.

The Washington Post reported this week that various grant programs within the department will be moved under other Cabinet agencies. This includes the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Office of Postsecondary Education, which will become part of the Labor Department. International Foreign Language Education will become part of the State Department.

It would take an act of Congress to eliminate the Education Department outright, but the White House does have leeway to downsize and reorganize its functions.

President Jimmy Carter created the department in 1979 as a sop to the teachers unions. Since then, it has done virtually nothing to improve the state of American public education while its budget has jumped from an original $14 billion to $268 billion in fiscal 2024. Meanwhile, U.S. test scores lag and the price of college has soared, leaving many graduates buried in debt.

Republicans from Ronald Reagan on have repeatedly vowed to dismantle the agency, but Mr. Trump is the first to follow through.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon noted that the goal is to give state and local education officials more discretion rather than to shackle them with the edicts that often accompany federal funding.

“The shutdown proved an argument that conservatives have been making for 45 years,” Ms. McMahon wrote in a recent op-ed for USA Today. “The U.S. Department of Education is mostly a pass-through for funds that are best managed by the states.”

Defenders of the department scare parents by claiming reforms will mean the end of vital programs at their local schools. Nonsense. “It simply means the end of a centralized bureaucracy micromanaging what should be a state-led responsibility,” Ms. McMahon explained. “Funding for low-income students and students with disabilities predates the Education Department and will continue indefinitely. Protecting students’ civil rights is work that will never go away.”

Indeed, the federal government supplies only about 8.5 percent of local education spending. “But the feds need relatively little money to exert power,” writes Neal McCluskey of the Cato Institute. And that power burdens school districts with edicts and mandates that often discourage reform and experimentation while doing little to improve student outcomes.

Eliminating the Department of Education was one of President Donald Trump’s campaign promises, and he deserves credit for moving forward where other GOP leaders got cold feet. Mr. Trump and Ms. McMahon should next put heat on Republicans in Congress to finish the job.