President Donald Trump made good on another campaign promise Thursday afternoon when he signed an executive order aimed at dismantling the U.S. Department of Education. The White House argues the department has not improved student outcomes and is not needed in a country where states and local districts already have a lot of control over their education needs. But only Congress can completely eliminate the department.
The department has a critical role in overseeing enforcement of anti-discrimination laws and distributing funding aid for schools with low-income students and students with disabilities. And experts say while not much may change in the short term, the long-term impact of this decision could have major implications for students and families.
“I believe that we will see delays in funds and money that is entitled to go to districts for a number of services,” Robert Kim, executive director of the Education Law Center, said in an interview with NJ Spotlight News. “We will see those delays and that will translate to cuts in the classroom, bigger class sizes, disruptions to services and supports for students with disabilities.”
“It’s devastating for the country that a president would go so far as to dismantle a federal agency meant to galvanize our resources and efforts in support of public education in this country,” said Kim. “To threaten disruption and delays in that process by transferring the critical functions of the department to an agency that does not have experience with those functions, that’s playing with fire here because so many millions of students directly rely on those funds and any delay or disruption in that, it would be catastrophic to those students.”
