President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to shutter the federal Department of Education and relegate all educational responsibility to individual states—a move that could impact crucial funding for K-12 schools and hamper civil rights enforcement—but experts warn it’s unlikely the federal government will be able to be hands off when it comes to education regulation, even if the department is closed.
Donald Trump looks on Oct. 23, 2024 in Zebulon, Georgia.
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Key Facts
Trump has called the Department of Education, which was created in 1979 by Jimmy Carter, an example of government oversight into the daily lives of Americans and suggested it’s been a poor investment for taxpayers, claiming the U.S. spends three times more money on education than any other nation “and yet we are absolutely at the bottom, we’re one of the worst” (U.S. News & World Report ranks the United States’ public education system as 12th in the world).
In a video message posted last year, Trump baselessly claimed the Department of Education is staffed by many people who “in many cases, hate our children” and said “we want states to run the education of our children, because they’ll do a much better job of it. You can’t do worse.”
Closing the Department of Education is outlined in Agenda47, the proposals the Trump campaign outlined during the primary election season, and Project 2025, a multi-part plan for a Trump administration created by the Heritage Foundation and dozens of other groups that Trump distanced himself from in the runup to the election.
While closing the Department of Education seems to be high on the priority list for Trump, his Agenda47 proposals surrounding education also outline orders for schools—like cutting funding for any school teaching critical race theory or “transgender insanity” and credentialing teachers who “embrace patriotic values and support the American Way of Life”—that would no longer be the federal government’s purview if all responsibilities were handed back to the states.
How many of the department’s responsibilities, like assigning federal funds, would be handled without the federal agency has not yet been made clear.
Crucial Quote
“We will drain the government education swamp and stop the abuse of your taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate America’s youth with all sorts of things that you don’t want to have our youth hearing,” Trump said during a September rally in Wisconsin.
News Peg
Billionaire Elon Musk, a Trump super donor who is expected to hold some kind of role in his next administration, on Monday called closing the Department of Education a “good idea.” He also posted a meme with a photo of Carter and text reading: “In 1979 I created the Department of Education. Since then America went from 1st to 24th in education.” What data that statistic relies on is unclear.
How Could The Department Of Education Be Eliminated?
Closing the Department of Education would require congressional action and likely a super majority of 60 votes in the Senate, according to The Washington Post. Republicans won back control of the Senate in last week’s election, but will remain several votes shy of 60, meaning any action requiring 60 votes would need the support of some Democrats. Closing the department was included as an amendment in a 2023 House vote last year, and 60 Republicans voted against it, including Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., a top House Republican Trump has selected for a UN ambassador role in his next administration.
What Does The Department Of Education Do?
The Education Department’s largest responsibility is the dolling out of federal education funds. Education is ultimately the responsibility of state and local governments under the current setup, but federal money supplements state resources and funds a variety of programs, many aimed at narrowing funding gaps for low-income or at-risk students. In Fiscal Year 2022, federal funds made up $119 billion, or about 14%, of total education funding. Hallmark programs include Title I, which provides supplemental funding to high-poverty K-12 schools used to hire teachers and otherwise support low-income communities, and the Office of Special Education Programs, which provides resources for disabled students through age 21. The department is also responsible for collecting statistics on enrollment, crime in school, staffing and other topics; making recommendations for education reform; running the Nation’s Report Card achievement tests; investigating civil rights violations; and overseeing the federal student loan program, including the distribution of Pell Grants.
What Is The Education Department’s Budget?
In Fiscal Year 2024, the Department of Education was allocated $238 billion, less than 2% of the total federal budget.
What Would Closing The Department Of Education Mean For Student Loans?
Trump has not specified what the fate of federal student loan programs would be if the Department of Education is eliminated. In any case, the next administration is expected to take a much tougher approach to student loan forgiveness efforts compared to President Joe Biden’s administration. Trump in June blasted Biden’s forgiveness plans as “vile,” saying they were just “to get publicity with the election.”
What Does Project 2025 Say About The Education Department?
Project 2025 calls for the allocation of the department’s programs to other areas in the federal government. Civil rights enforcement in schools, for instance, would be the responsibility of the Justice Department, the student loan program would move to a new sector in cooperation with the Treasury Department and other programs would move to the Department of Health and Human Services, according to The Washington Post. Project 2025’s education plan calls to eliminate Title I funding (which supports students from low-income families) and instead dole out block grants to states without spending oversight; cut the Head Start program, which the Center for American Progress warns would restrict access to childcare in rural areas and “exacerbate inequalities among families with young children”; and roll back Biden-era Title IX revisions that prohibit discrimination in schools based on of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Who Else Has Tried To Eliminate The Department Of Education?
Ronald Reagan campaigned on getting rid of it in 1980, Bob Dole argued in favor of eliminating it during his 1996 Republican presidential campaign against Bill Clinton, and both Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rand Paul, R-Ky., called for its elimination in 2015. Arguments for eliminating it have varied over time and included calls ranging from getting the federal government out of education entirely to transforming it into a grant-making agency to reallocating its programs to other agencies.
Big Number
44%. That’s how many Americans have a favorable view of the Department of Education, according to a Pew Research survey released in August. There are wide partisan gaps in how the department is viewed—with 27% of surveyed Republicans viewing it as favorable compared to 62% of Democrats. The Department of Education was ranked No. 14 on a list of 16 federal agencies in terms of favorability, the Pew survey showed, with the National Park Service (76% favorable), U.S. Postal Service (72%) and NASA (67%) at the top. The Department of Justice (43%) and IRS (38%) were the only agencies ranked lower.
Source: Forbes
