President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday that seeks to eliminate the Department of Education and realize a decades-old refrain from Republicans: that education needs to be sent back to the states. The subtext is that when the Education Department drops the reins, state education authorities will be the ones to pick them up and keep things moving.
While the rhetoric couldn’t be any clearer, what Trump’s order functionally entails for state governments remains to be seen. State education officials tell NOTUS that they’re on standby, waiting to hear more from Education about what all of this will mean for them.
“On March 14, the Kentucky Department of Education received correspondence from the U.S. Department of Education regarding its announced reduction in force. To date, KDE has received no further communication from USED regarding closure or additional reorganization,” Robbie Fletcher, Kentucky’s commissioner of education, told NOTUS in an emailed statement hours before Trump signed the order. “In the event of additional changes at USED, KDE will expect immediate guidance on how federal education funding to states, as appropriated by Congress, will continue to flow to Kentucky without disruption.”
When the agency announced sweeping personnel cuts that, when complete, will result in the administration cutting department staff by half, state education chiefs were given assurances that reduction in force at the Department of Education would not disrupt programs like the flow of formula funding or discretionary grants, nor the department’s work to support individuals with disabilities.
“I want to assure you that critical functions for elementary and secondary education will not be impacted by these cuts,” Hayley Sanon, principal deputy assistant secretary and acting assistant secretary at the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, wrote to state officials. “These funds will continue to flow normally, and program functions will not be disrupted. Supporting states in implementing and strengthening these programs continues to be a top priority for this Department.”
Kentucky is among the states that receive the most federal funding, per pupil, from the Department of Education.
Similarly, the Mississippi Department of Education hasn’t made changes to its administration of federal funding programs for districts and said it’s continuing its work to support students and teachers, while waiting for more details.
“We cannot speculate about potential changes at the U.S. Department of Education because the impact on states would depend on the details of the changes and guidance from ED about how to adjust to the changes,” Jean Cook, chief of communication for MDE, told NOTUS in an email ahead of the order.
In Washington, Republican lawmakers zeroed in on messaging around Trump’s order to begin the elimination of the department early Thursday. House Republican Conference Chair Lisa McClain and the House Committee on Education and the Workforce circulated talking points for Republican officials, doubling down on Trump’s campaign trail messaging: that education is best closest to the states and that the “woke” Department of Education is failing American children.
That message has also been picked up by Trump acolytes on the state level. Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s superintendent of public instruction, has been a consistent and vocal proponent of eliminating the Department of Education on similar grounds.
“Secretary McMahon is absolutely on the right path; it’s a mandate from the voters,” Walters told NOTUS in a statement. “President Trump was clear on the campaign trail that he intended to dismantle the Department of Education, and Secretary McMahon is doing that. We’ve already started preparing for it in Oklahoma by booting woke, liberal, union-driven agendas out of Oklahoma schools. The sooner we stop paying bureaucrats to enforce warped ideology, the faster those dollars get into the classroom where they belong.”
Functionally, there’s been little official detail about what the closure of the Education Department will look like for the states. Trump said on Thursday that programs like Title I funding and Pell Grants would be spun off and administered through other agencies; he didn’t say which ones. Earlier in the day, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said those programs would remain under the Department of Education.
The text of the executive order Trump signed offered little more in the way of details. It affirmed the administration’s commitment to dismantling the Education Department, to whatever extent that they can under applicable law; fully abolishing the agency would require an act of Congress.
Other leaders, particularly those in Democratic states, are less optimistic that Trump’s vision for the Department of Education will result in anything other than disorder in the nation’s public schools.
“The Executive Order to close the US Department of Education could result in a catastrophic impact on the country’s most vulnerable students and cutting much-needed funding will specifically impact students of color, students with disabilities and students in low-income Communities,” the Association of California School Administrators said in a statement.
“Congress will make the ultimate decision on the closure of the USDOE. We will continue to monitor what happens in Washington, D.C. However, a stripped-down version of the department threatens important programs and won’t help students learn to read or how to add and subtract.”
California has the most students enrolled in K-12 public schools, and receives billions of dollars in funding from the Department of Education each year.
Trump said Thursday that eliminating the Department of Education was about improving student performance and eliminating bureaucracy. More than anything, the Department of Education serves as a hub for the distribution of state dollars, the enforcement of civil rights in education institutions and ensuring the implementation of education policies dictated by Congress.
“We want to return our students to the states. Some of the governors here are so happy about this,” Trump said, referencing Republican governors at the event like Ohio’s Mike DeWine and Florida’s Ron DeSantis. “They want education to come back to them, to come back to the states, and they’re going to do a phenomenal job.”
The Democratic Governors Association, in a statement, said the executive order was an attack on public schools and that Republican governors would have to answer for it.
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Violet Jira is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.