Republican presidential candidates have often promised to abolish the Department of Education.  In 1983 Ronald Reagan said that it should be scrapped. Mitt Romney promised to make this happen in 2012. A decade later Betsy DeVos, former secretary of education under Mr Trump, said her department should not exist. And Mr Trump has said he hopes that Linda McMahon, his education secretary, will “put herself out of a job”. She is halfway there: on March 11th the administration announced it will fire more than 1,300 employees, cutting the workforce in half.