Trump Begins the Process of Axing the Department of Ed

Fulfilling a campaign promise – one that experts say will significantly harm Black students — President Donald Trump is expected to sign a sweeping executive order today that begins dismantling the Department of Education, a cabinet-level agency created in part to ensure all children have equal access to K-12 education.

Trump’s order comes after nearly half of the DOE’s staff, including employees responsible for education policy research, data collection, and statistical analysis, were fired last week. It also comes just days after the Senate confirmed Education Secretary Linda McMahon, whom Trump instructed to “put herself out of a job” at a recent press conference.

Civil rights groups, state attorneys general, and education advocates have already vowed to fight the order, pointing out that only Congress can eliminate a cabinet-level agency it created. The DOE is also tasked with investigating public school discrimination complaints, protecting students’ civil rights from marginalized groups, and distributing federal money to underfunded public schools.

Fedrick Ingram, secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s largest educators’ union, said the executive order “is directly in line with Trump’s overall effort to erase any gains made by Black folks, women, the LGBTQ community, and anyone else he seems to dislike.”

From school funding to racially-biased tests to Trump-era restrictions on the teaching of Black history, “Black students have had the chips stacked against them for decades,” Ingram told Word In Black last week. Gutting the department that helped them, he said, is “cruel.”

In a statement, the NAACP called the move “reckless and dangerous for America’s children” and the future of our nation. “What we are witnessing is not only the dismantling of an agency but the unraveling of our democracy.”

The Trump administration has already taken steps to narrow the agency’s authority and significantly cut its workforce while communicating its plans to try to shutter it.

RELATED: Department of Ed Cuts are Real, and Black Students Will Feel It

Since its creation in 1979 during the Carter administration, the DOE has played a pivotal role in ensuring equity in education and enforcing civil rights laws. Its Office for Civil Rights investigated discrimination cases in schools, particularly when states or local districts failed to act.

For Black students, the OCR has been vital in challenging disproportionate punishment of Black students, unfair access to advanced classes and coursework, and racially biased school funding. It also helps administer government loans for college, which a disproportionate number of Black students use to pay for their education.

Without the DOE, advocates warn, stubborn racial disparities in education — already difficult to close  — will grow even wider.

A White House fact sheet said the order directs McMahon “to take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure (of) the Department of Education and return education authority to the States, while continuing to ensure the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”

Christopher Nellum, executive director of EdTrust, a nonprofit advocacy organization, also told Word In Black last week that removing federal oversight by dismantling the DOE will unequivocally hurt Black students.

“The Department of Education’s role is to provide oversight, accountability, and protect civil rights,” Nellum says. “There’s no part of dismantling the agency that will make any of this better. It will only make it worse — and Black students will bear the brunt of it.”

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