The Supreme Court of the US (SCOTUS) recently ruled to allow President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon to continue shrinking the Department of Education (DOE).
President Trump issued an Executive Order last March to “facilitate” the DOE’s termination.
Since then, Secretary McMahon had been downsizing the DOE while acknowledging that its complete abolishing must be done by Congress.
States led by Democrat Attorneys General and other progressive groups impacted by and opposed to the DOE’s shrinking capabilities sued the Trump administration.
Lower courts responded by freezing the Trump administration’s layoffs.
SCOTUS’s decision reversed such freeze until the case is further litigated in appeals court and, potentially, SCOTUS itself.
“Today marks a victory for education,” said Secretary McMahon, “we're one step closer to returning education to the states.”
Trump similarly hailed SCOTUS’s decision as “a major victory,” adding that it enables the administration to “proceed on returning the functions of the Department of Education back to the states.”
The Trump administration has repeatedly pledged to close the DOE.
The Department of Education, established in 1979, was intended to “support and complement” the educational efforts of the states, whose authority over education is enshrined in the Constitution’s tenth amendment.
Many conservatives, however, have criticized the Department of Education for manipulating students and schools to channel progressive ideology.
According to the White House, DOE has spent over $3 trillion on education initiatives since its inception in 1979.
However, despite the DOE’s mammoth expenditures, standardized National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores reveal pupils’ worsening performance on essential topics like mathematics and reading.
Additionally, the DOE’s regulations reportedly caused nearly $3.9 billion in costs and 4,239,530 paperwork hours across the country.
