Trump wants to not just shake up but eliminate the federal education bureaucracy and send it back to the states. Students could get stuck in the middle.
While President-elect Donald Trump campaigned vigorously on a string of issues, the state of American education was not one of the mains sells of a second Trump term. Still, it’s become a dominating policy point in the wake of his decisive victory, as his promise to eliminate the Department of Education (DOE) come into sharper relief.
Trump had repeatedly said on the campaign trail that he would “close the Department of Education, move education back to the states”, reviving a promise that many Republicans, from Ronald Reagan to Ted Cruz, have flirted with.
“This is an age-old, Republican orthodoxy”, Margaret Spellings, the former secretary of education under President George W. Bush, told Newsweek. “There’s plenty of room for improvement at the Department of Education, that was true when I was there.”
“The question becomes to what end? Why? And what’s the best organizational structure to serve students?” Spellings said.
Since winning back the White House, Trump has doubled down on his plans to dismantle the DOE, saying in a video announcement that he plans to shut the department down “very early” in his second administration. That promise has left many parents, families and educators panicked and confused about how this will impact their children.
“In many of our communities, particularly across the heartland of this country, schools and school systems are the largest employers in the community and are something that draws the community together”, former Massachusetts Education Secretary Paul Reville told Newsweek. “Most of those communities are now anxious to lose that.”
Here’s what we know about Trump’s DOE plans:What does the DOE actually do?
Created by Jimmy Carter in 1979, the DOE was split off from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare as part of a campaign promise the Democratic president made to the National Education Association.
Since its inception, the departments biggest responsibility is dolling out federal education funds to supplement state resources and fund a variety of programs. Those programs include Title I, which provides financial assistance to schools with a high percentage of low-income students, and the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), which is dedicated to “improving results for infants, toddlers, children and youth with disabilities.”
The DOE is also in charge of collecting data on items like enrollment and staffing, oversight of the federal student loan program for higher education and the investigations of civil rights violations.
In the 2024 Fiscal Year, the federal government allocated the DOE $238 billion, or less than 2 percent of the federal budget. Federal funds cover about 8 percent of K-12 educational costs, with most of the money coming from individual states.
“We’ve been recalibrating and relitigating the relationship relationship between the states and the feds since the founding of the Department of Education”, Spellings said.
According to the Pew Research Center, 44 percent of Americans have a favorable view of the DOE. Public support is divided along party lines, with 62 percent of Democrats having a favorable view, compared to just 27 percent of Republicans. On a list of 16 federal agencies, the DOE ranks 14th, the third-lowest favorability after the Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department.What could happen to the DOE under Trump?
In an effort to curb what he sees as federal overreach and a misuse of taxpayer dollars, Trump is seeking to eliminate the DOE, but he would not be able to do so with executive action alone.
