Trump says states already implementing changes from his order to shut Education Dept.

President Trump said Monday that states are already starting to take charge of education, after he signed an executive order last week dismantling the federal Department of Education.

Speaking with reporters during a Cabinet meeting, Mr. Trump said the American people are “going to see a tremendous change very quickly having to do with education.”

“The process has already begun, very strongly,” he said.

States have typically run most functions of their educational systems, with roughly 90% of annual funding coming from state and local taxes.

As the president was speaking, workers were clearing out their offices at the Education Department nearby in Washington. They were given 30 minutes to clean out their desks.

Advocacy and labor groups on Monday filed a lawsuit to stop Mr. Trump’s executive order to dismantle the Department of Education, saying the move is unconstitutional and will hurt students.

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Mr. Trump said the handling of student loans — which will be transferred to the Small Business Administration — will be done “very professionally.”

He said the “various medical aspects and health aspects of the education process” will be taken over by the Department of Health and Human Services.

“The rest of the states are going to start coming in and taking all of the information on all of their students and I think a lot of that information is going to be shipped to different states,” he said. “…They’re so anxious to get it – they’re calling us – and they’re so anxious to get it.

“We’ll be shipping the records of the children that they’re taking care of, that they want to take care of, and the process will begin,” he said. “And I think it won’t be that long before the states will be running the Department of Education.”

Mr. Trump said that teachers will be “taken very well care of.”

“Personally, I don’t care. Union, non-union, it doesn’t matter. Teachers is [sic] so important to this country and to me and we’re going to take great care of our teachers,” he said.

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The order directs Education Secretary Linda McMahon to close the department “while continuing to ensure the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”

Ms. McMahon said Monday that if the issues within the country’s education system aren’t fixed, “we will go further and further down.”

“With everything else we’re doing within our country — building, manufacturing, bringing all of that back — if we don’t educate in the best way we can, we will be lost, and those generations will be lost,” she said. “It is, I think, the cornerstone of our culture and what we need to focus on.”

She said sending education back to the states is the “best place where it can be.”