President Trump on Thursday signed an executive order to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, a long-anticipated action that will affect how billions of dollars in federal funding for California will be distributed to millions of students, educators and institutions.
“We’re going to shut it down and shut it down as quickly as possible,” Trump said at a White House event to celebrate his executive order. “It’s doing us no good. We want to return our students to the states.”
Trump pledged that vital, mandated programs — Pell Grants for low-income college students, Title I funding that serves students from disadvantaged families and programs for students with disabilities — would continue without interruption under the management of other agencies.
The dismantling of the department has been unofficially in progress for weeks but the approval of Congress would be required to fully shut it down.
Yet Trump’s impact…
