On the campaign trail, Donald J. Trump depicted the nation’s public schools as purveyors of an extreme ideology on gender and race. One of his proposed remedies has been to revive a Reagan-era call to shut down the federal Department of Education, founded in 1979.
“We will move everything back to the states, where it belongs” he said in one speech. “They can individualize education and do it with the love for their children.”
Democrats have vowed to resist the effort.
But is shuttering the department possible? And if not, how could Mr. Trump use the agency to achieve his policy goals?
Is the Department of Education at risk?
Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for the second Trump administration, lays out a clear plan for how the Department of Education could be shut down. While Mr. Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025, many of its architects were close to his campaign.
The proposal envisions moving much of the department’s work to other federal agencies, like Health and Human Services, before devolving the federal government’s main funding stream for K-12 schools, known as Title I, to the states. The process would theoretically take 10 years, and could lead to vast decreases in funding for public education. Those budget cuts would disproportionately affect low-income children and those with disabilities, since federal K-12 funding is largely targeted toward those groups.
But any effort to close the department would have to go through Congress. Lawmakers would have to vote to disband the agency, a highly unlikely proposition, according to education experts in both parties. Republican members of Congress would most likely hear opposition from superintendents and other education leaders in their districts; schools in Republican regions rely on federal aid from the agency, just as schools in Democratic regions do.
“I don’t think it’s possible to eliminate the United States Department of Education. That’s a talking point,” said Derrell Bradford, president of 50CAN, a nonprofit that supports school choice policies, like charter schools and vouchers.
But, he added, “the idea that local entities should be in control of education at the local level? That is very popular among both Democrats and Republicans.”
How much power does the department have?
Perhaps paradoxically, even as Mr. Trump has vowed to close the department, he has implied that he would use the agency’s investigatory powers to peer into local schools’ practices around gender and race.
He wants to prevent schools from recognizing transgender identities and has said he would reward those that embrace an explicitly patriotic curriculum while defunding schools that teach critical race theory or “gender indoctrination.”
It is certainly possible for a president to create funding incentives around specific education priorities. Still, less than 10 percent of K-12 school funding passes through the agency. A vast majority of the money comes from state and local taxes.
And the department does not control local learning standards or reading lists.
It does issue regulations on how civil rights laws apply to various groups of students, including L.G.B.T.Q. students, those from racial minorities and girls. Under President Biden, the department’s Office for Civil Rights issued guidance saying that gay and transgender students must have equal access to most school programs and facilities.
But those regulations are on pause in half the states after Republican lawsuits sought to block them from going into effect. If re-elected, Mr. Trump would almost certainly try to reverse those regulations.
Earlier this fall, the Trump campaign did not respond to a question about how, specifically, Mr. Trump proposed to close the Department of Education while also using its powers.
In a written statement, Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the campaign, said, “President Trump has always supported bringing education back to the states, closest to parents and educators, where it belongs.”
What does it actually do?
While the agency’s involvement in K-12 issues has often been in the spotlight politically, by far the Department of Education’s biggest expenditure is on higher education.
More than 70 percent of its $224 billion annual budget goes to the federal student aid program.
Under President Biden, the Department of Education canceled more than $167 billion in student debt for 4.75 million borrowers, about 10 percent of those who hold a federal student loan. Mr. Trump and other Republicans have often opposed that effort, arguing it is an unfair giveaway to those who are college educated and an overstep of the agency’s authority.
The limited federal funding for K-12 schools commonly pays for special-education aides, school social workers, tutoring programs and additional teachers so that class sizes are lowered. The department also has a research arm that collects data on student achievement and points toward best practices in the classroom. Following its guidance is mostly optional.
It is not easy for a president to withhold federal dollars from schools. The money flows out according to formulas preset by Congress.
It has had opponents since the beginning.
Opposition to the Department of Education is today associated with Republicans. But the agency began its life with fierce opponents on both sides of the aisle.
President Jimmy Carter established the department, often known simply as Ed, in 1979, fulfilling a campaign promise to the nation’s largest teachers’ union, the National Education Association. He did so over the objections of his own presidential transition team and many in Congress — including fellow Democrats.
Some staunch liberals like Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, opposed the creation of the department. They believed all of the issues affecting children — health care, nutrition, cash welfare and education — should be handled by a single federal agency, then known as the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Another liberal skeptic was Al Shanker, head of the second-largest teachers’ union, the American Federation of Teachers. Still, over the next four decades, Ed became a part of the beltway firmament, popular with Democrats and many Republicans, too. Many of the programs Ed oversees are sources of bipartisan comity, such as funding for vocational education.
Gareth Davies, a historian who has written about the founding of the Department of Education, said the revival of conservative opposition to the agency shows “just how far the G.O.P. has moved in the past two decades, from compassionate conservatism to culture wars.”
While the idea may play well to the conservative activist base, he wrote in an email, “it gives Democrats opportunities to say that the G.O.P. is bashing teachers and public schools.”
Frederick Hess, director of education policy at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, argued that talking about shutting down the Department of Education was a “cul-de-sac” for Republicans like Mr. Trump, who should instead be focused on helping students recover academically from long pandemic school closures, which were pushed by Democrats.
“If we’re going to push back on problematic woke silliness, what good stuff are we going to fight for instead?” he asked.
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