‘Cruel chaos’: State school superintendent issues statement after Trump orders Education Department dismantled

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday calling for the dismantling of the U.S. Education Department, advancing a campaign promise to take apart an agency that’s been a longtime target of conservatives.

Trump has derided the Education Department as wasteful and polluted by liberal ideology. However, completing its dismantling is most likely impossible without an act of Congress, which created the department in 1979. Republicans said they will introduce legislation to achieve that, while Democrats have quickly lined up to oppose the idea.

The order says the education secretary will, “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities.”

It offers no detail on how that work will be carried out or where it will be targeted, though the White House said the agency will retain certain critical functions.

Trump said his administration will close the department beyond its “core necessities,” preserving its responsibilities for Title I funding for low-income schools, Pell grants and money for children with disabilities.

After President Trump signed the order, Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal said in a statement “The Trump Administration has made it no secret that one of their key priorities is to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education.”

“What we are seeing in Washington, D.C. is a cruel chaos that has been intentionally designed to promote a school privatization agenda and undo a 60-year commitment to equity and civil rights that lies at the heart of our democratic system, Reykdal said. “In other states, that agenda has led to greater divides between student groups along socioeconomic and racial lines.”

The White House said earlier Thursday the department will continue to manage federal student loans, but the order appears to say the opposite. It says the Education Department doesn’t have the staff to oversee its $1.6 trillion loan portfolio and “must return bank functions to an entity equipped to serve America’s students.”

At a signing ceremony, Trump blamed the department for America’s lagging academic performance and said states will do a better job.

“It’s doing us no good,” he said.

Already, Trump’s Republican administration has been gutting the agency. Its workforce is being slashed in half, and there have been deep cuts to the Office for Civil Rights and the Institute of Education Sciences, which gathers data on the nation’s academic progress.