President-elect Donald Trump has proposed a plan eradicate The Department of Education has called for “returning all educational work and needs to the states” according to its Agenda47 policy platform.
According to education experts, the end of the Department of Education could leave millions in funds, grants, scholarships and more hanging in the balance for millions of K-12 and college students attending U.S. schools.
Criticism argue the department that federal education spending has risen since its inception — It cost $23 billion to date in fiscal year 2025, about 4% of government spending so far, but like measures of student success Reading and math scores have declined in recent years.
What does the Department of Education do?
The DOE was established as a Cabinet-level agency in 1979 under then-President Jimmy Carter, but was originally created in the late 1800s to collect data on what is working effectively in education for policymakers and educators.
The education agency facilitated the expansion of federal aid for education over the years. After World War II, the GI Bill expanded educational assistance for war veterans. After the Soviet Union launched Sputnik into space, the agency expanded science, math, and foreign language instruction in elementary and secondary schools and supported vocational and technical education.
In the 1960s and 1970s, antipoverty and antidiscrimination efforts shaped the Department of Education’s mission to provide equal access to education nationwide. This created Title I funding to reduce educational achievement gaps between low-income and rural students and low-income schools.
President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with House Republicans in Washington, Nov. 13, 2024.
Allison Robbert/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
The DOE also holds schools accountable for enforcing Title IX gender-based nondiscrimination laws. Title VI of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Title by race.
Federal Student Aid, which provides more than $120 billion a year in grants, work-study funds and low-interest loans to approximately 13 million students, is also sponsored by the Department of Education.
The Department also holds schools accountable under the Every Student Succeeds Act, which requires each state to provide data on subject performance, graduation rates, suspensions, absenteeism, teacher qualifications, and more.
The department says on its website that it does not develop school curricula, set enrollment and graduation requirements, or establish or accredit schools or universities.
However, it has played a major role in school funding for decades, particularly as investment in K-12 schools deteriorated amid the Great Recession of 2008.
according to Education Law CenterUS students lost nearly $600 billion in state disinvestment in their public schools in the decade following the Great Recession.
The complicated nature of the department’s closure includes managing billions in DOE funds directly by individual states, according to Clare McCann, Director of Higher Education at Arnold Ventures. McCann said allocating the money would be geared toward skilled DOE workers.
“There’s a reason the Department of Education was created and it was to have this kind of expertise and policy on these (education) issues,” McCann told ABC News, adding: “The officials who work in the department. Education are real experts in the field. in that”.
Neal McCluskey, an education analyst at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, says dismantling the department could be as simple as giving states funding but letting them decide how it is administered.
“Most of what I’ve seen, and what I’ve written about, is, for example, you can take all the money from K-12, Title One, IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), etc. Of course, the law needs to be changed, but there’s one thing you can do. it’s blocking. You’d say, ‘We’re going to fund these things, but we’re going to give them to the state; they can decide how it’s administered,'” he told ABC News.
Some education experts like Wendy A. Paterson, professor and dean of Buffalo State University’s School of Education, told ABC News in an interview that she “didn’t see how she could continue in the Department of Education offices without serving families and children.” a federal department.
Paterson said if the same funding changes, it will likely make the national worse shortage of teachers and impact target communities in which the Department of Education specializes, including low-income, disabled, or FAFSA-seeking students.
“There’s an intimate relationship between our schools and the community that we create and pass on to our children, and that’s important,” Paterson said. “So if we don’t have a federal agency that recognizes the importance of schools and post-secondary education and the right of all children to have access to education, what are we saying about democracy?”
Why does Trump want to eliminate the Department of Education?
In a statement about the plans for the 2023 schools, Donald Trump said: “One thing I will do very early in the administration is to close the Department of Education in Washington, DC and return all education and educational work and needs to the states.”
“We want to get our children’s education right because they’re going to do a much better job,” Trump said.
Trump’s Agenda47 does not indicate how disbanding the department would affect programs run by the Department of Education.
However, on the campaign trail, in interviews with Elon Musk and “Fox & Friends,” Trump has repeatedly said he wants to close the agency and replace it with an education department official for his cabinet, in line with Trump’s goals to dismantle “government bureaucracy” and restructure government agencies to make them more efficient.
Several prominent conservatives and Republicans have proposed closing the departments over the years, including Ronald Reagan, Vivek Ramaswamy and lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
McCluskey said in a last attempt arguing that the department is “unconstitutional” that it has too much power over schools over local and state agencies.
House Education and Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx also argued that it is not a constitutional requirement to have such a department: “I can’t find the word education in there (the Constitution) among the duties and responsibilities of Congress or the federal government,” she told ABC News- i Representative Foxx, Republican of North Carolina.
Is it possible to delete it?
While theoretically possible, education policy experts who spoke to ABC News suggest it would be a highly chaotic and unrealistic task on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2025.
The bold initiative won’t happen right away, but McCluskey told ABC News it could get through Congress.
“The Department of Education was created through legislation,” McCluskey told ABC News. “Legislation comes from Congress. If you want to get rid of the Department of Education, you have to do it through legislation,” McCluskey added.
In this Jan. 27, 2023, file photo, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona delivers remarks at the department’s Lyndon Baines Johnson Building in Washington, DC.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, FILE
At this point, without congressional approval, McCluskey said the president-elect’s campaign message is invalid.
“I think that what is said in campaigns and what is actually done often have to be two different things, because in campaigns, politicians say a lot of things that make it look like it’s easy to do what they want to do,” McCluskey. he said
“A president cannot fire everyone in the Department of Education and have one person manage these programs,” he added.
Trump’s education policy
Trump, however, lists some federal policies he wants to implement in schools across the nation. This includes ordering a future education department to stop programs that it says “promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age,” as well as punishing teachers or schools that do so.
He hopes to create an accrediting body to certify teachers who “embrace patriotic values and embrace the American way of life,” though he didn’t elaborate on what that would entail.
In addition, IX. It would prevent the title from allowing transgender women to compete in sports. He said it would create funding preferences and favorable treatment for states and school districts that eliminate teacher tenure and support merit pay for K-12 educators and allow parents to vote for principals.
