By Anita Hamilton

President Donald Trump will sign an executive order Thursday aimed at dismantling the Education Department, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed.

"The President is finally taking much-needed action to return education to where it belongs, and that's to educators closest to students in their classrooms in their respective states," Leavitt told reporters Thursday morning.

Trump has long said that the department's duties should be turned over to the states. While closing the 4,000-person department requires an act of Congress, the administration has already made moves to shrink it, including announcing last week that it was cutting its staff by nearly 50%. The department will "continue to deliver on all statutory programs that fall under the agency's purview, including formula funding, student loans, Pell Grants, funding for special needs students, and competitive grantmaking," Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in announcing the cuts. In an interview with SiriusXM earlier this week, McMahon said the department's role is "to help provide funding so that the states themselves can help with their own programs," adding that the creativity and innovation has to come from the states themselves.

A group of 21 attorneys general sued last week to block the department's planned job cuts, arguing that the move is "equivalent to incapacitating key, statutorily-mandated functions of the Department."

A federal judge in Maryland district court ordered the department to reinstate probationary workers because their terminations weren't for performance, but instead were illegally conducted reductions in force. The administration is appealing the ruling.

The department oversees some $1.6 trillion in federally-guaranteed student loans held by millions of Americans. Scaling back its operations could help the for-profit education industry if it leads to less federal oversight.

Shares of the for-profit firm Adtalem Global Education, which owns former DeVry schools, were up slightly Thursday morning and have doubled over the past year. The stock price of Grand Canyon Education, another for-profit operator, was basically flat, but is up 28% over the last 12 months.

Write to Anita Hamilton at anita.hamilton@barrons.com

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March 20, 2025 12:09 ET (16:09 GMT)

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