Republican presidential candidates have often promised to abolish the Department of Education. In 1983 Ronald Reagan said that it should be scrapped. Mitt Romney promised to make this happen in 2012. A decade later Betsy DeVos, former secretary of education under Mr Trump, said her department should not exist. And Mr Trump has said he hopes that Linda McMahon, his education secretary, will “put herself out of a job”. She is halfway there: on March 11th the administration announced it will fire more than 1,300 employees, cutting the workforce in half.
The Department of Education was created in 1979 by Jimmy Carter. Mr Trump says abolishing it will send education back to the states, but they already control most of what primary and secondary schools do: the education department only funds about 10% of their budgets. What, then, is it for? It plays a role in protecting the most vulnerable students, says John King, a former education secretary under Barack Obama, providing extra funding for poor and disabled pupils. It manages financial aid for over 12m college students. And it collects data, which allows states to compare themselves to each other.
The department also oversees civil-rights enforcement in schools, a task Mr Trump seems keen to keep. In February the Office of Civil Rights within the department announced investigations at five universities for “widespread antisemitic harassment” on campus.
So far the cuts fall short of the full smackdown Mr Trump promised. That may reflect political calculation: according to an Economist/YouGov poll, only 17% of Americans want the department eliminated. But this may not be the end state. Congress could move the administration of student loans to the Treasury and support for special education to the health department, possibly cutting both in the process. He would then have accomplished what Reagan did not, and add another bullet point to his list of promises kept. ■
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