(BIVN) – President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order on Thursday, outlining his intent to close the Department of Education. 

The order directs Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to facilitate the closure of the DOE and “return authority over education to the States and local communities while ensuring the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.” 

“Everybody knows it’s right,” President Trump said at the ceremonial order signing, held before a room full of school children. “The Democrats know it’s right, and I hope they’re going to be voting for it because ultimately it may come before them. But everybody knows it’s right and we have to get our children educated.”

From Section 1 of the Executive Order:

Taxpayers spent around $200 billion at the Federal level on schools during the COVID-19 pandemic, on top of the more than $60 billion they spend annually on Federal school funding. This money is largely distributed by one of the newest Cabinet agencies, the Department of Education, which has existed for less than one fifth of our Nation’s history. The Congress created the Department of Education in 1979 at the urging of President Jimmy Carter, who received a first-ever Presidential endorsement from the country’s largest teachers’ union shortly after pledging to the union his support for a separate Department of Education. Since then, the Department of Education has entrenched the education bureaucracy and sought to convince America that Federal control over education is beneficial. While the Department of Education does not educate anyone, it maintains a public relations office that includes over 80 staffers at a cost of more than $10 million per year.

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. 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.

Closure of the Department of Education would drastically improve program implementation in higher education. The Department of Education currently manages a student loan debt portfolio of more than $1.6 trillion. This means the Federal student aid program is roughly the size of one of the Nation’s largest banks, Wells Fargo. But although Wells Fargo has more than 200,000 employees, the Department of Education has fewer than 1,500 in its Office of Federal Student Aid. The Department of Education is not a bank, and it must return bank functions to an entity equipped to serve America’s students.

Ultimately, the Department of Education’s main functions can, and should, be returned to the States.

Hawaiʻi’s Congressional delegates, all Democrats, were quick to respond.

“Schools across the country rely on federal dollars but Donald Trump would rather gut their funding and funnel it into the pockets of billionaires,” stated Sen. Brian Schatz. “Everything this administration does in the name of so-called efficiency and savings is about one thing: enriching the richest people to ever walk the planet. This time, it’s our children who will pay for it with their futures.”

Representative Ed Case called it “one of the broadest and deepest and outright shortsighted and heartless of many attacks on the foundations of our society to date.”

Rep. Case stated the DOE supports over 178,000 kids across 200 Hawaiʻi K-12 schools, including $72 million for Title I schools, which serve over 104,000 students.

Senator Mazie Hirono (D, Hawaiʻi)

“A strong public education system is critical to our country’s economic success, our global competitiveness, and Americans’ quality of life,” said Sen. Mazie Hirono, who noted Abolishing the DOE requires an act of Congress. “Through his attempt to abolish the Department of Education, Donald Trump will continue his focus on crippling our government and sow chaos in schools and communities across the country by eliminating crucial programs that our children rely on. These programs support low-income students and students with disabilities, help to prevent discrimination in the classroom, provide meals for kids in need, and ensure access to quality education for every student in our nation.”

Hirono pointed out that Trump “has already begun to take steps to undermine ED’s functions by significantly cutting funding for the Department and attempting to fire thousands of ED employees, effectively halving the Department’s workforce.”