Trump Is Making Reagan's Education Department Dream Reality

President Trump signed an executive order Thursday to abolish the Department of Education, calling it a “historic action that was 45 years in the making.” He criticized the agency’s failures, pointing out that American education has declined despite massive spending. “Everybody knows it’s right, and the Democrats know it’s right,” he said.

As Trump noted Wednesday, when President Jimmy Carter created the department in 1979, it faced opposition from “members of his own cabinet, as well as the American Federation of Teachers, the New York Times editorial board, and the famed Democrat, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan.” He added, “History has proven them right. Absolutely right.”

Ronald Reagan knew it, too. In fact, Reagan was pushing for the Department of Education to be abolished mere months into its inception.

“I propose—and would have already started, if your hypothesis is correct—a planned and orderly transfer back to the states and local communities of functions the federal government has usurped and which it has proven it is incapable of operating. And one of the first of those would be welfare. One of the second would be in the field of education,” Reagan told PBS on January 14, 1980, while running for president. “I would like to dissolve the $10 billion National Department of Education created by President Carter and turn schools back to the local school districts where we built the greatest public school system the world has ever seen. I think I can make a case that the decline in the quality of public education began when federal aid became federal interference.”

Once in office, Reagan slashed the department’s budget significantly. Unfortunately, by 1988, he reversed course and requested an increase from $18.4 billion to $20.3 billion. But now Trump is finishing the job that Reagan never got to see through, and it couldn’t come soon enough. Just as Reagan predicted, the department was a total disaster.

“After 45 years, the United States spends more money on education by far than any other country,” Trump said Thursday. “But yet we rank near the bottom of the list in terms of success.”

Citing alarming statistics, Trump said, “Seventy percent of eighth graders are not proficient in either reading or in math,” while “forty percent of fourth graders lack even basic reading skills.” Public school students today, he noted, perform worse in reading than they did when the department was founded.

Despite its legacy of failure, the department’s discretionary budget has exploded by 600%. Trump called out the massive federal bureaucracy: “I ride through the streets of Washington, and it says Department of Education, Department of Education. I said, how do you fill those buildings? It’s crazy what’s happened over the years.”

Trump assured that key programs like Pell Grants and Title I funding will be preserved but redistributed. “We’ve cut the number of bureaucrats in half,” he added.

Declaring that education belongs at the state level, Trump vowed, “We’re going to shut it down and shut it down as quickly as possible.” He pointed to successful international models, dismissing claims that large populations make reform impossible.

With this move, Trump is shifting education control away from federal bureaucrats and back to the states. And Ronald Reagan would be proud.