Ron DeSantis Joins Former Rival Trump to Celebrate Demise of Education Department

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will join President Donald Trump in the White House as he signs an executive order Thursday afternoon making good on his campaign promise to close the Department of Education.

The order intends to move power over education back to families and the states instead of Washington bureaucracies. The order directs Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return education authority to the states. She is directed to continue ensuring Americans receive the education services, programs, and benefits on which they rely.

The order will also direct any remaining programs or activities receiving Department of Education funds to refrain from advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion programs or gender ideology.

Education leaders will celebrate the signing with Trump, including Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn, Moms for Liberty founder Tiffany Justice, former presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, school choice advocate Corey DeAngelis, Heritage Foundation education experts Jason Bedrick, Lindsey Burke, and Jonathan Butcher, and Independent Women’s Forum policy analyst Neeraja Deshpande, The Daily Signal has learned.

“The promise to dismantle the Department of Education is not a new one, however, President Trump is the first to follow through,” Justice told The Daily Signal. “Promises made, promises kept. I am proud to stand behind the president to undertake this effort and return education to the states and ultimately give the power back to the parents.”

The Biden administration used the Department of Education to push gender ideology on children, rewriting federal Title IX law to expand the definition of “sex” discrimination to include “gender identity.” This would have allowed males who identify as females in women’s and girls spaces and sports.

Trump’s Education Department quickly sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to educational institutions receiving federal funds clarifying that it will enforce Title IX protections in K-12 schools and on college campuses on the basis of biological sex, not the sex that one chooses to identify as, if that’s different from their biological sex. This followed a judge’s ruling striking down the Biden administration’s attempted rewrite of Title IX.

Trump has said he wants McMahon to “put herself out of a job.”

“I will close the Department of Education and move education back to the states where it belongs,” Trump said during his campaign.

On March 11, the Trump administration reduced the Education Department workforce by roughly half—from 4,133 to about 2,200. 

The mission of the department, created by Jimmy Carter in 1980, was “to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.” But after 45 years of existence and more than $3 trillion in spending, high school seniors’ math and reading outcomes remain stagnant.

Math scores for 13-year-olds are the lowest they’ve been in decades, and 13-year-olds’ reading scores are the lowest since testing began over 30 years ago, according to the White House. In 2023, 13 Baltimore, Maryland, high schools had zero students who tested proficient in mathematics.

All 50 states have their own education departments that could largely take over the operations of the federal agency, according to Heritage Foundation education expert Jonathan Butcher. Essential federal responsibilities performed by the Education Department can be taken over by other federal agencies directly related to those responsibilities.

“The Obama-era and Biden-era Department of Education tied the department’s most important function—providing funding to schools and colleges—to compliance with the radical ideological goals of partisan bureaucrats,” said Deshpande, a guest at the signing. “I’m hopeful that by dismantling the Department of Education, President Trump will be able to redirect the Department’s vital functions of funding and civil rights enforcement to other federal departments and ensure that ideology stays out of education.”