Former President Donald Trump wants to end the Department of Education and empower states if he is reelected, he said during an X Spaces interview with Elon Musk on Monday.
The 45th president pointed out that U.S. education scores are tumbling compared to other developed countries, even though the United States spends “more per pupil than any other country in the world.”
“I want to close the Department of Education — move education back to the states…” Trump told Musk, Tesla CEO and X/Twitter owner.
Listen to the Full Interview:
pic.twitter.com/W0t0NIxAdQ
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2024
Trump contended that if states were allowed sole control of their own educational systems, it would decrease costs while driving up healthy competition between the states.
“But if you moved education back to the 50 [states], you’ll have some that won’t do well…But they’ll actually be forced to do better because it’ll be a pretty bad situation,” he said. “But if you think about it, you’ll have some of these states — I’ll bet you’d have 30, 35 states [where education] will be much better. And you know what? It’ll cost less than half what it is in Washington. And these people don’t care about the students in these far away states.”
“It would be unbelievable,” he emphasized.
Musk told Trump he was “making a good point” and appeared to agree that such a policy would enable Americans to more easily choose where they live and where they could have better opportunities.
“Yeah. I think you’re making a good point in that if…each individual state has to compete against other states, then people will naturally move to states where it’s better,” Musk said.
“That’s right,” Trump replied.
Trump has previously called for the Department of Education to be ended or scaled back. In 2016, he said the department “can be largely eliminated.” Betsy DeVos, who served as the U.S. Secretary of Education under Trump, has also called for the abolishment of the Department of Education.
Last night Trump endorsed the idea of eliminating the Department of Education!
On February 7th, 2017, the US Senate confirmed Betsy DeVos as Trump’s Secretary of Education.
Purposefully, on that same day, I introduced HR 899, a bill to terminate the Department of Education. pic.twitter.com/57x3jeWkkS
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) August 13, 2024
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) praised Trump’s endorsement of ending the Department of Education in a post to X on Tuesday, and renewed his call to pass his one-sentence bill, HR899, which would terminate the department.
“I have reintroduced this bill each Congress, and I have taken care that it is always designated as HR 899. Many people like that my bill is only one sentence long. No beating around the bush. Perhaps my colleagues can take time to read it!” Massie said in part.