Donald Trump made a bold campaign promise to his supporters: he would eliminate the US Department of Education and give states complete control over education.
He didn’t explain how he planned to eliminate the cabinet-level agency, but he can’t do it alone, making it a difficult task. Congress is asked to approve the creation or dissolution of an agency.
However, without eliminating the department, the incoming Trump administration, bolstered by a rightwing backlash against public schools that erupted following the Covid-19 pandemic, could change key aspects of the department’s budget and policies in ways that would be felt in schools across the nation.
Project 2025, the conservative manifesto, also proposed abolishing the department, indicating that it is one area where much of the conservative movement agrees.
The Department of Education, which has approximately 4,000 employees, distributes federal funding to schools for specific programs aimed primarily at low-income students and students with disabilities, as well as establishes policy directives for those programs. It manages the country’s student loan portfolio. It oversees some education-related civil rights policies, such as Title IX.
Much of education in the United States is administered locally. The majority of funding comes from state and local sources, with state legislatures, education agencies, and school boards determining the majority of standards and policies for their respective schools.
Nonetheless, dismantling the department is a long-standing conservative talking point that indicates a desire to overhaul public education and, in some cases, deprioritize public schools.
“At some level, it’s the wrong conversation, because you could abolish the Department of Education and little to nothing would actually change unless Congress also voted to cut or zero out funding for the various programs,” said Rick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.
But it’s more than just symbolic; achieving it would result in significant changes to K-12 and higher education across the country.
According to Kelly Rosinger, an associate professor in Penn State’s department of education policy studies, the elimination would send a “clear signal that we do not see education as important in a democratic society.”
Beyond just a warning, however, “there is some very real damage that could be done, regardless of whether a Department of Education exists, but especially if it does not,” she stated.
Could it be done?
Dismantling the education department has been a conservative rallying cry since it was established in 1979 by Democratic President Jimmy Carter, who disbanded what was then known as the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, called for the new department to be dismantled, but it remained intact.
Since then, removing it has been a key component of the conservative platform. Efforts to repeal it rarely reach the ballot box.
Republicans view the department as an example of federal overreach and unnecessary bureaucracy, according to Hess. It is also viewed as providing a “VIP lane” for teachers’ unions and education advocacy groups to lobby and have a backchannel to the federal government, he said.
“They think it’s a gross violation of the constitutional scheme,” Hess told me. “They think it takes too much power from communities and shifts it to bureaucrats in Washington.”
Rosinger pointed out that education is not explicitly mentioned in the constitution as something that the federal government is responsible for. However, she stated that the federal government now has an established role in ensuring students have “access to excellent educational opportunities” regardless of their backgrounds. It also plays a clear role in ensuring civil rights in schools.
Despite the conservatives’ persistent efforts to dismantle it, the Department of Education is unlikely to disappear under Trump unless the filibuster is abolished.
To pass legislation in the United States Senate, 60 senators must vote for it, as senators can use the filibuster to delay a bill indefinitely. Republicans will have 53 senators in 2025, which is insufficient to overcome the filibuster threshold.
Hess said that some of the department’s programs, such as funding for low-income schools and students with disabilities, are widely supported by both parties.
If the department were abolished but its components were largely preserved, the programs could be transferred to other agencies and reverted to the structure that existed before Carter established the department.
“Whether one abolishes the department or doesn’t abolish the department is an interesting kind of symbolic debate, and it matters because it tells us what people think, but it doesn’t significantly change the federal role,” according to Hess. “What changes the federal role is whether these programs themselves get cut or changed, or whether the rules are rewritten.”
Rosinger contends that if the department is closed and programs relocated, institutional knowledge about how these programs are administered will be lost. “It moves us away from a professional bureaucracy, a group of experts in education who are implementing policies that have to do with education,” she told me.
Changes go beyond department itself
Instead of federal programs, Republicans propose giving states a lump sum of money in the form of a no-strings-attached block grant, Hess explained.
“Republicans would like to dramatically reduce the number of federal strings involved, and they would like to have a lot fewer bureaucrats,” according to him.
Block grants are frequently criticized for not going where the money is needed because there are few restrictions on their use, as well as for being a way to cut and then phase out funding because they do not meet the full need of what they are intended to fund.
Hess suggested that programs that do not directly fund students, such as those for teacher training, could be eliminated.
Higher education would also be impacted by any changes. Biden’s student loan repayment and forgiveness plans could be scrapped under Trump.
Policies aimed at promoting racial equity and eliminating gender discrimination are likely to be targeted by Republicans, who will seek to eliminate federal diversity, equity, and inclusion programs as well as policies that they perceive to promote LGBTQ+ ideology. For example, the Biden administration attempted to expand Title IX to include gender identity, which Trump is likely to reverse.
Project 2025 suggests several options for expanding vouchers and parental control over their children’s education.
Rosinger stated that the project’s proposed policies would cause the public to “lose trust in public education to be able to do the job that the federal, state, and local governments are supporting it to do, in order to justify further defunding public schools and colleges”.
