Education Department, R.I.P.

OPINION:

President Trump is venturing into territory no other Republican president has dared go. He is closing the Cabinet department his predecessors were afraid to touch despite their rhetoric. The president selected Linda McMahon to lead the team to wind down the sprawling bureaucracy.

The new education secretary has informed half her staff that their services will no longer be required as of March 21. Meanwhile, they will be locked out of the hideous Lyndon B. Johnson headquarters building, whose Stalinist architecture suits the failed policies hatched within its walls.

Few government agencies have failed as spectacularly in the 46 years since their creation. Despite plummeting student performance, Congress allocated $82 billion this year.

Uncle Sam collects this sum from each state’s taxpayers, and after skimming a few billion from the top, he redistributes the remainder to the states. The Education Department is a middleman that only makes things worse.

“We’re going to move education into the states, so the states instead of bureaucrats in Washington can run education,” Mr. Trump explained at a press event Wednesday.

For now, the department will retain all congressionally mandated programs and positions, but it won’t do so with 4,133 employees. The interim workforce of 2,183 will attach fewer strings to grant funds.

“When we cut, we want to cut the people who aren’t working or aren’t doing a good job,” Mr. Trump said. “We’re keeping the best people.”

When Washington sets educational priorities, parents have less say in the process. The administration wants to end the federal role entirely, as Ms. McMahon explained in a Fox News interview: “That was the president’s mandate. His directive to me was to shut down the Department of Education. … We’ll have to work with Congress to get that accomplished.”

This is anathema to liberals who hijacked federal educational standards and turned schools into indoctrination centers that promote fashionable ideologies. Test scores plunged as students spent more time terrified by global warming fairy tales and less time learning about math, science and history.

For however long the department sticks around, Ms. McMahon will use the time to promote a back-to-basics agenda. On Monday, she sent letters to 60 universities saying they will lose their federal funding if they continue to fail to protect Jewish students from the violent pro-Hamas campus insurgency that blocked students from the classroom last year.

Proving she meant it, she joined with the attorney general and secretary of health and human services to pull $400 million in funding from Columbia University. The federal government provides the school with $5 billion in grants, even though it has a massive $15 billion endowment, so there’s more leverage available.

The bigger question is why the public subsidizes schools with massive financial resources. The new White House team wants to end the gravy train, break up the status quo and restore the role of parents.

“What we always want to do is school choice — and we’re doing it,” Mr. Trump said.

Giving states educational flexibility will improve outcomes. Families that want to set bright futures for their children will have a reason to move to jurisdictions that support homeschooling, classical education, charter schools, private school choice and other innovative ideas that bring competition to the schoolhouse.

The Education Department never fulfilled its lofty goals. It’s time to let it go.