Education Secretary Linda McMahon has given the order to begin dismantling her Department from within, an old aspiration of US President Donald Trump, who raised that flag during last year’s presidential election. “It’s of no use to us,” the Republican often repeats.
McMahon, whose main credit is co-promoting wrestling championships with her husband, on Tuesday ordered the transfer of six programs under her jurisdiction to four federal departments (Labor, Health, Interior and State) as a strategy to circumvent the law protecting the Department of Education, she announced. Washington Post this Tuesday.
The decision was expected since last March the Republican president had signed a decree that put an end to the Department by distributing its functions among the states. The task that Trump gave to McMahon left no room for the imagination to interpret his intentions: “I hope you do a great job of staying out of a job,” he gave to his Secretary of Education.
“The U.S. Department of Education announces six new interagency agreements with four agencies to streamline the federal education bureaucracy, ensure efficient execution of funded programs and activities, and move toward fulfilling the President’s promise to return education to the states,” as released by the Department of Education in a statement Tuesday.
McMahon will give up six sensitive education programs to empty his department, as he promised to do with Trump earlier this year. The ordinance passed Tuesday transfers primary, secondary and higher education programs to the Ministry of Labor. It also transfers post-secondary education grant programs to Labor. Policy on Native American education in the United States is assigned to the Interior. The program to accredit medical training abroad is transferred to Healthcare. It also shifts support for child care on college campuses to enrolled parents. And the Department headed by Marco Rubio (Secretary of State) is assigned international education and the study of foreign languages to improve the efficiency of the programs managed under the Fulbright-Hays scholarship. In reality these are agreements aimed at simulating the transfer of power, which the law prevents.
McMahon uses a legal trick to try to avoid the law that requires these programs to be directly dependent on education. It found a loophole by handing over management of education programs to other government agencies through a contract with the Department of Education. In this way, Education legally maintains the powers, but ignores the execution of programs, which can be cut.
The legislation gives Congress sole authority to eliminate the department, which has been in place since 1979, when Democratic President Jimmy Carter approved its creation to advance Americans’ education rights and coordinate federal programs.
McMahon already tried this route earlier this year, when he signed an agreement to transfer subsidies for career, technical and adult education to the Department of Labor, he says. Washington Post.
“The Trump administration is taking bold steps to dismantle the federal education bureaucracy and return education to the states,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said Tuesday.
McMahon enthusiastically welcomed the controversial mission entrusted to him by Trump last March. There is a paradox that the head of Education does not believe in the usefulness of the Ministry she leads. “For 43 days the government remained paralyzed, schools remained open, students attended classes and teachers received their salaries. This leads to the question of whether we really need the Department of Education,” says the Republican politician through a publication on the social network
McMahon posted another message with a countdown, hinting that the process to dismantle his department was imminent. And he wrote: “Returning education to the states does not mean the end of federal support for education. It simply means the end of a centralized bureaucracy that micromanages what should be the states’ responsibility.”
In this Trump administration, where contradictions abound, the cover of the Department website that McMahon directed for 11 months features the following motto in large letters: “Promote educational excellence and ensure equal access.”
Among the offices that can also be moved to other departments to empty Education, according to the send, include the Office for Civil Rights; the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services; the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education; and the Office of Postsecondary Education. All of these agencies provide essential services to ensure student rights and avoid discrimination based on race, sex, or disability. Powers to grant subsidies to groups with more difficulty accessing education will also be transferred.
When Trump tasked him with eliminating the Department of Education, McMahon vowed to do everything in his power to get the job done.
“We believe other departmental functions would benefit from similar collaborations,” McMahon wrote in an op-ed published Monday in USA Today.
The powers of Education are limited because the main powers are held by the States. So the Department of Education is essentially responsible for federal funding for elementary and secondary schools, although it does not determine educational programs. It also administers student loans, investigates complaints of discrimination and examines national progress in reading and math skills. It also decides on federal grants worth $18.4 billion. Likewise, they have a program (15.5 billion) to help the education of students with disabilities.
