Act aims to decentralize education, shift roles from Department of Education to other agencies
Republican Sen. Mike Rounds on Thursday introduced a bill to abolish the U.S. Department of Education following promises from President-elect Trump to decentralize education.
The “Returning Education to Our States Act” would transfer the existing responsibilities of the Education Department to various other departments and programs that it currently oversees, according to Fox News.
Rounds (pictured) called the legislation “a roadmap to eliminating the federal Department of Education by practically rehoming these federal programs in the departments where they belong.”
“The federal Department of Education has never educated a single student, and it’s long past time to end this bureaucratic Department that causes more harm than good,” Rounds told Fox News.
He also said, “[l]ocal school boards and state Departments of Education know best what their students need, not unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.”
The new bill follows Trump’s campaign promise to eliminate the Department of Education.
“We will drain the government education swamp and stop the abuse of your taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate America’s youth with all sorts of things that you don’t want to have our youth hearing,” Trump said during a September rally in Wisconsin, The College Fix previously reported.
The department oversees several areas, including financial aid and student loans for college students, funding for career and vocational education, and regulations permitting male athletes who identify as transgender to compete in women’s collegiate sports.
The agency “was created in 1979 when President Jimmy Carter signed legislation making it a cabinet-level agency. Rounds’ bill would return the U.S. to pre-1979 practices when other federal government agencies handled education issues,” The Daily Wire reported.
The new act “would require the Department of Health and Human Services to take over disability programs, the Department of Labor would become responsible for career programs, the State Department would take over ‘research and training efforts overseas,’ loan and grant programs would fall under the Department of Treasury, and American Indian education programs would become the responsibility of the Department of the Interior,” according to the Daily Wire.
Also this week, Trump announced he will nominate Linda McMahon, who led the Small Business Administration during his first term, for education secretary, The Fix reported.
“Linda will use her decades of leadership experience, and deep understanding of both education and business, to empower the next generation of American students and workers, and make America number one in education in the world,” Trump said in a statement Tuesday.
“We will send education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort,” he said.
MORE: Conservatives rally behind Trump’s ‘education wrestler’ Linda McMahon
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