TRUMP AIMS TO DISMANTLE THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Major funding for schools nationwide is at stake
By G.A. McNeeley
February 10, 2025 (Washington D.C.) – The Trump administration has begun drafting an executive order that would begin the process of eliminating the Department of Education, CNN reports. This order would instruct the Secretary of Education to create a plan to diminish the department through executive action. Since Congressional approval is required to eliminate any agency created by Congressional action, Trump also plans to push Congress to pass legislation that would abolish the department.
In an Oval Office press briefing, Trump stated, “I believe strongly in school choice, but in addition to that, I want the states to run schools.” He added that he wants his Secretary of Education nominee Linda McMahon to “put herself out of a job.”
Potential Impacts: State and National
The prospect of dismantling the Department of Education has led to questions and fears over potential chaos over how key responsibilities and billions in federal funding — including handling federal financial aid, grants for disadvantaged students and civil rights enforcement — would be affected.
First, many Department of Education programs carry out mandates explicitly created by Congress that just can’t be abolished by executive fiat. And second, some of these functions, and the existence of a federal department focused on education, are very popular, even among Republicans.
The Department of Education also has authority over financial lifelines that so many campuses and students rely on. The department’s K-12 programs serve more than 50 million students attending 130,000 public and private schools; federal grant, student loans, and work-study assistance benefits more than 13 million post-secondary students
California has a massive stake in how the department is run. The state receives more than $2.1 billion in Title I grants to counteract the effects of poverty — more than any other state — with $417 million provided to Los Angeles Unified, the nation’s second-largest school system, according to the California Department of Education.
More than 200,000 low-income students in the California State University system, the largest and most diverse four-year higher education system in the nation, annually rely on $1 billion in federal Pell grants to afford college. At the University of California, more than 80,000 undergraduate students received about $454 million in Pell Grants in the 2023-2024 academic year.
Support and Opposition
Becky Pringle, President of the National Education Association, said, “If it became a reality, Trump’s power grab would steal resources for our most vulnerable students, explode class sizes, cut job training programs, make higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle class families, take away special education services for students with disabilities, and gut student civil rights protections. Americans did not vote for, and do not support, ending the federal government’s commitment to ensuring equal educational opportunities for every child.”
Tony Thurmond, the California State Superintendent of Public Instruction, said on X (formerly Twitter), “While the Trump Education Department no longer protects students from discrimination, California law is unchanged. My office remains committed to defending the rights of all California students.”
Liz Sanders, a California Department of Education spokesperson, said, “We are incredibly concerned about what seems to be a thoughtless approach to changing essential federal programs that support our kids every day and support our most vulnerable kids every day. We’re talking about essential academic support services. We want to make sure that these services are able to have a level of continuity for our educators and our families and our students. Simply a one-sentence hatchet job is not how we should make changes that impact our kids.”
Michael Petrilli, president of the right-leaning Thomas B. Fordham Institute think tank, said, “It would take an act of Congress to dismantle the department and Republicans simply do not have the votes, let alone the fact that it would be an unpopular move in many Republican districts.” He also said that closing down the department was “pretty hypothetical.”
Rick Hess, a senior fellow and director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, said it was “perfectly reasonable” to abolish the department, or at least downsize it, because of what he called wasteful spending, political biases toward teacher unions and misplaced responsibilities.
Hess and Petrilli have questioned why educational bureaucrats should manage a trillion-dollar student loan portfolio rather than financial experts in the Treasury Department — a shift advocated by Project 2025, the conservative policy playbook written in part by many members of the first Trump administration.
Educational Ranking
Trump lamented US educational performance and cost. “We spend more per pupil than any other country in the world, and we’re ranked at the bottom of the list.”
As of 2023, the annual Best Countries Report ranked the United States, on the basis of education rankings, at the top. Ironically, despite the United States having the best-surveyed education system on the globe, U.S. students consistently score lower in math and science than students from other countries. A Business Insider report in 2018, ranked the U.S. 38th in math scores and 24th in science, out of 195 recognized countries.
Can Trump’s plans succeed?
While calls to abolish the Department of Education aren’t new, the move has historically failed to get support from Congress.
In 2023, 60 Republicans joined 205 Democrats in voting against an amendment that would have expressed Congressional support for ending the authority of the Department of Education to administer K-12 programs. The amendment failed.
But, cuts and changes are being made already via executive action, and more could occur once a Secretary of Education is confirmed. Dozens of employees at the Education Department were placed on paid administrative leave Friday as part of the Trump administration’s larger effort to rid the federal workforce of employees associated with diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility efforts.
“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,” said Trump, who has targeted programs such as diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and critical race theory.
But public opinion may play a role. A recent Wall Street Journal poll showed 61 percent of Americans oppose plans to eliminate the Department of Education. And a bipartisan November 2024 survey showed rank-and-file Republicans opposing this idea by a two-to-one margin.
Even if Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Christian Nationalists want to kill the Department of Education, many Democrats, Republican members of Congress from swing districts, and Americans in general may feel otherwise. Trump’s effort to eliminate the Department of Education will prove to be a key test for Republicans in Congress, to determine whether they will choose loyalty to Trump when their constituents learn of the effort, even if most are opposed.
Sources:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-plan-kill-education-department-may-fail.html.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/education-rankings-by-country.
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