Buried on page 45 of Jimmy Carter’s White House Diary is this ominous little entry:

Met with the leaders of the NEA [National Education Association]. They are quite interested in having a separate education department formed. If we can work out some independent agency just for education where the teachers don’t dominate it, then I would favor the idea.

Oh, we’ll just bet the NEA was interested in a separate education department. Until then, the vital task of indoctrinating our children had been relegated to merely coequal status within the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. A dedicated cabinet-level department would give the nation’s most powerful teachers union added muscle and unlimited funding with which to impose its malign will.

Later in his diary, Carter said that one of his educational goals for creating such a department would be to “include parents in the teaching process.” So much for the good intentions on our road to education hell.

Carter, of course, did ultimately create the Department of Education in 1979, despite what he later termed “formidable” opposition in Congress. Unfortunately for our nation’s children, that opposition wasn’t formidable enough.

Yesterday, though, after decades of educational damage — and decades of toothless Republican bluster about doing away with the source of that damage — Donald Trump actually did something about it. In an executive order titled “Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities,” Trump set the stage:

Our Nation’s bright future relies on empowered families, engaged communities, and excellent educational opportunities for every child. Unfortunately, the experiment of controlling American education through Federal programs and dollars — and the unaccountable bureaucracy those programs and dollars support — has plainly failed our children, our teachers, and our families.

“We’re not doing well with the world of education in this country,” said Trump at yesterday’s signing ceremony, “and we haven’t for a long time.”

This writing had been on the wall since before Trump took office. Buttressing his repeated campaign vows to abolish the DOE, former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos penned an op-ed on February 6, which began:

Since its creation in 1979, the Department of Education has sent well more than $1 trillion to schools with the express purpose of closing the gaps between the highest and lowest performers. Today, those gaps are as wide as they have ever been, and by many measures, even wider.

The abolitionist movement gained further momentum 10 days ago when current Education Secretary Linda McMahon issued a “reduction in force” letter to her department, which called for the elimination of nearly half its staff.

The opposition to Trump’s dismantlement has been an odd mix of ferocity and resignation. “This is a dark day for the millions of American children who depend on federal funding for a quality education, including those in poor and rural communities with parents who voted for Trump,” said NAACP President Derrick Johnson.

Beleaguered Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the EO a “tyrannical power grab” and “one of the most destructive and devastating steps Donald Trump has ever taken.”

Clearly, if he’s taking fire like this, Trump is over the target.

Yet last fall, a poll taken by Lake Research Partners, a Democrat polling firm, found that — surprise! — the American people want to preserve the DOE. According to the poll, 58% of voters surveyed — including 76% of Democrats and 44% of Republicans — don’t want to see the Education Department nixed, compared to just 29% who support getting rid of it.

To me, these numbers seem to be a byproduct of bad education — of the American taxpayer. How many of those surveyed have given real thought to what a miserable money pit the DOE has been and how it has presided over a steady slide of American educational standing among the nations of the world?

On the other hand, as Trump’s EO notes, “While the Department of Education does not educate anyone, it maintains a public relations office that includes over 80 staffers at a cost of more than $10 million per year.”

Why on earth would the DOE need its own PR department? Its good work and excellent results should speak for themselves in terms of exceptional student performance, no?

Well, no. As Trump’s EO also notes, “This year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that 70 percent of 8th graders were below proficient in reading, and 72 percent were below proficient in math. The Federal education bureaucracy is not working.”

The more Donald Trump and his team can put the sad facts of our nation’s educational system before the American people, the more likely he is to gain broad support for his effort to reform it.

Trump’s EO doesn’t call for the elimination of all DOE programs, though. Instead, as the AP reports, “Trump said his administration will close the department beyond its ‘core necessities,’ preserving its responsibilities for Title I funding for low-income schools, Pell grants and money for children with disabilities.”

This seems smart, and it positions Trump more as a pragmatic problem-solver than the tyrannical power-grabber of Chuck Schumer’s fever dreams.

So, what’s next? Trump can’t make the DOE disappear without an act of Congress — and 60 votes in the Senate — but he can certainly hollow it out so that it’s effectively a Department of Education in name only.

“Bravo!” posted Trump antagonist and small-government GOP Congressman Thomas Massie on Wednesday, just ahead of Trump’s announcement. “Congress should support President Trump’s bold agenda by passing my bill, HR 899, to Abolish the Department of Education. We could also use recisions [sic] and the budget reconciliation process, which only require 51 votes in the Senate, to back him up.”

And therein lies the likely solution to the problem of needing congressional approval to abolish the DOE. Trump might not be able to do away with the department and its “radicals, zealots and Marxists,” but he can certainly starve them of sustenance.

“We want to return our students to the states,” said Trump yesterday, “where just some of the governors here are so happy about this. They want education to come back to them, to come back to the states, and they’re going to do a phenomenal job.”

Indeed, that’s what the 10th Amendment is all about. The Constitution says nothing about a federal role in the education of our children. Instead, the Framers said this: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

The proponents of our failing educational status quo won’t surrender without a fight, though. Said surly American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, “See you in court.”