How Red States Plan to Carry Out Trump’s Executive Order Eliminating the Department of Education

Red state officials awaiting guidance on how to respond to the executive order dismantling the Department of Education say they are eager to centralize authority locally.

Trump signed an order Thursday afternoon authorizing Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to begin closing the Department of Education, while continuing to ensure Americans receive the education services, programs, and benefits on which they rely.

McMahon provided some clarity as to how this would be achieved in a Friday op-ed in Fox News: “As we execute President Trump’s directive, we will systematically unwind unnecessary regulations and prepare to reassign the department’s other functions to the states or other agencies—including funding programs for states to support low-income students and learners with special needs, the distribution of student financial aid, civil rights enforcement, and data collection.”

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The Small Business Administration will take over the Department of Education’s student-loan program and the Department of Health and Human Services will take over special-needs programming, the president announced Friday.

Trump has been clear about his intention to return education to the states, but exactly how the executive order will change the role of states is not immediately clear.

While Louisiana state Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley expects additional guidance from the Trump administration about how states should respond to the executive order, he thinks each state will manage education somewhat differently, based on what they prioritize.

The executive order will “elevate states’ abilities to make decisions that are right for their kids,” Brumley told The Daily Signal.

“It acknowledges and strengthens state sovereignty to make educational decisions on the best interests of their kids,” according to the superintendent.

Brumley hopes block grants will be given to the states to allow state policy leaders, local leaders, parents, and teachers to oversee education.

“For me, education is a local enterprise when it’s best, and that’s why I think state leaders, along with local leaders, are very well-suited to make good decisions for their kids,” he said.

However, Brumley recognized that the executive order calling for McMahon to dismantle the federal department doesn’t abolish federal laws or statutes.

“We will remain committed to serving students with disabilities, to providing environments that are anti-discriminatory, and will continue to follow all federal laws,” he said.

Louisiana is strongly aligned with Trump’s belief that education is a state issue, Brumley said.

“We are going to make sure that in our state, we are going back to the basics, accelerating parental rights, expanding educational freedom,” he told The Daily Signal. “And I think that where you see that Louisiana is the most rapidly improving state in the country for academic outcomes, I believe that we can accelerate those outcomes without having the bureaucracy coming from [Washington] and being able to make those decisions as much as possible closer to the kid, with moms and dads and teachers and state policy leaders.”

Kentucky also has not received communication from the federal Department of Education regarding “closure or additional reorganization,” Robbie Fletcher, Kentucky’s commissioner of education, told NOTUS in an emailed statement before the signing.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who received several shout-outs from Trump during the executive order signing, said the directive will usher in a “new era of American educational excellence.”

States already implement their own curriculums and operate their own programs, DeSantis wrote in The Wall Street Journal. The funding allocated to the Department of Education can be redirected toward block grants to the states, he added.

“Through block grants, the states will be better positioned to invest federal dollars in programs that drive student performance without having to meet burdensome reporting requirements,” DeSantis wrote. “Under the last administration, these requirements went beyond burdensome and required DEI measures to be used at every turn, a perfect example of bureaucratic red tape that was hindering progress.”

Florida’s state-led education reforms have made its schools first in the nation, Sydney Booker, communications director for the Florida Department of Education, The Daily Signal.

“As the Secretary of Education begins dismantling the US Department of Education under the new executive order,” Booker said. “Florida will continue to do all the great work we’ve been doing, now unshackled from the morass of the USDOE.”

When asked how the executive order will change education operations in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott told reporters the Lone Star State developed its own core training for teachers in reading and math, leading to better scores.

“We got to get back to the basics and perfect the basics, which focus on reading and math,” he said after the signing. “We’ve seen these reading and math academies in Texas meet with great success. We need to be able to expand those to every corner of our entire studies.”

The Texas Education Agency is “prepared to implement any changes to better serve the students, school systems, and taxpayers of Texas,” the agency told The Daily Signal in a statement.

While McMahon was directed to do everything in her power to eliminate the education agency, Trump will need Congress’ support to abolish the department once and for all, since it was created by an act of Congress. In the meantime, many red states will await McMahon’s directives on how to return power and funding over education to states, schools, parents, and students.