Trump’s Illegal & Failing Effort to Dismantle the Department of ED

WASHINGTON, DC—In response to efforts by House Republicans to enable the Trump administration to dismantle the Department of Education and move offices to other agencies, Kevin Carey, the vice president of Education and Work programs at New America, issued the following statement.

The McMahon dismemberment plan is a failure.

Millions of taxpayer dollars have been squandered by shuffling programs between federal agencies for no good reason. Not a single student has gotten a better education as a result. At a time when national test scores are falling and millions of people are struggling to pay back college loans in default, House Republicans want to codify Donald Trump’s agenda to rob parents, students, and teachers of the federal protections they need.

Shutting down the Department of Education is deeply unpopular among the American people: only 1 in 4 adults support the move, and half of all Republicans oppose it. Special education is just that—education—and shouldn’t be ripped out and moved to a department run by an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist. Moving career education to the Department of Labor will create exactly the kind of needless red tape this administration claims it wants to reduce.