The push to dismantle the Department of Education is almost as old as the department itself. Republicans have pushed to dismantle it since its inception, calling it a “crazy quilt of wasteful programs” in an official party platform in 1980 and accused it of “meddling in our schools” in 1996.

Three days after President Donald Trump was sworn into office, Kimberley Gilbert, an English immigrant who lives in Weymouth, began sending her eight-year-old daughter to school with her birth certificate.