WHEN AMERICAN presidents announce education policies, they are inevitably flanked by a phalanx of pupils. The executive order signed by President Donald Trump on March 20th was no exception—the children even held up their own mock executive orders after practising their autograph (one managed only to do a large letter “P”). Except that this was not an order to reform curriculum, increase testing or even to expand school choice: it was an order that the education secretary put herself out of a job by closing down the federal Education Department.