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Let’s take a look at global news. In a potentially sweeping move, President Donald Trump is expected to issue an executive order aimed at abolishing the US Department of Education, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The order may come as soon as Thursday (US time), the newspaper said.

“The experiment of controlling American education through Federal programs and dollars—and the unaccountable bureaucrats those programs and dollars support—has failed our children, our teachers, and our families,” the draft order reads, the WSJ reported.

However, the draft had been labelled as “pre-decisional,” which leaves open the possibility it could change.

Public education, long considered the backbone of functioning liberal democracy, has been a consistent target of right-wing rhetoric in the US.

In recent decades, conservatives have increasingly promoted a variety of alternatives to public schools, such as charter schools (publicly funded institutions operating independently from public school systems), school vouchers (which allow families to choose the educational institutions their children and tax dollars flow to) and homeschooling, as alternatives to public education.

Nearly 70 per cent of public school teachers are in unions or
employees’ associations, according to the non-partisan National Centre for Educational Statistics, which have historically been viewed with suspicion by Republicans.

With Reuters