President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to dismantle the Education Department. Surrounded by schoolchildren seated at desks, each with their own small copy of the order, Trump instructed McMahon to shut down the department “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education, and return authority over education to the States and local communities.”

The move was decades overdue, and Trump deserves great credit for having the political courage to make it. The department, whose primary function is to administer federal funding, about $70 billion annually, has long been the nation’s poster child for waste, ineffectiveness, and ideological rot. An act of Congress is required to shutter the department entirely, but Trump’s executive order is a good step toward its richly deserved end.