What Does the Department of Education Actually Do?

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Donald Trump really knows how to sell someone on working for him. “I told Linda, ‘Linda, I hope you do a great job at putting yourself out of a job,” he said Tuesday in the Oval Office. That’s Linda McMahon, whom he’s nominated to lead the Department of Education. The president promised that he would abolish the department during the campaign, though doing so would require an act of Congress. But he’s been vague about what that would mean—and one reason might be that many people are a little vague on what the department actually does.

Republicans have been calling for an end to the Department of Education basically since it was established, in 1979. The specific arguments have varied, but they’ve usually boiled down to some version of the idea that education decisions should be made at the local level, rather than by the federal government. As President Ronald Reagan discovered when he tried to axe the department, this is more popular as a talking point than as policy.

Contrary to what some attacks on the department say or imply, it doesn’t determine curricula. Those are set at the state and local levels, though the federal government does sometimes set guidelines or attach strings to funding in exchange for meeting metrics. During the Obama administration, Tea Party activists railed against “Common Core” standards, which they said were federal overreach. In fact, Common Core was neither created nor mandated by the federal government. The Obama years actually saw the federal government step back from control by ending No Child Left Behind, a controversial George W. Bush initiative.

One of the Education Department’s biggest footprints nationally is as a distributor of federal funds. Drawing from its roughly $80 billion budget, it sends billions to state and local school systems every year, especially to poorer districts, via the Title I program, which aims to provide equal education through teacher training, instructional material, and enrichment programs. The department also provides billions in financial aid—both through programs like Pell Grants and, since 2010, by making student loans directly to borrowers—and it runs FAFSA, the widely used mechanism for student financial-aid requests. (Less than 5 percent of the federal budget goes to education.)

The Education Department also enforces rules around civil rights—most notably through Title IX, which prevents discrimination in federally funded education on the basis of sex and has been interpreted to govern issues including equality in athletics programs and how schools handle sexual harassment and sexual violence. President Joe Biden also expanded protections for transgender students by issuing rules through the department banning discrimination “based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics in federally funded education programs.” These powers have made the department a major target for conservatives. (The Trump administration promptly withdrew Biden’s rules.)

Trump’s platform called for the end of the Education Department, but in an interview with Time last year, Trump suggested a “virtual closure.” He was vague about what that would mean. “You’re going to need some people just to make sure they’re teaching English in the schools. Okay, you know English and mathematics, let’s say,” he said. “But we want to move education back to the states.” This doesn’t make clear how he’d manage this enforcement, nor what would happen to federal education spending. Federal funds accounted for about 14 percent of state and local education funding in the 2022 fiscal year, the most recent data available—a lifeline for many districts, and especially crucial in some red states that have supported Trump.

Some of the president’s allies have been more specific about their plans. Project 2025, for example, wants to dismantle the Education Department as well. The document suggests that the government could simply distribute education funding to states to use as they see fit, with no conditions. In practice, that would likely mean red states funneling more money into charter schools, religious education, and other alternatives to public schools. (Project 2025 is skeptical of what it calls “the woke-dominated system of public schools.”) The plan would return student lending to the private sector. But even Project 2025 foresees many of the Education Department’s functions, such as Title IX matters and the Office of Postsecondary Education, being dispersed to other parts of the federal government.

While Trump talks about getting rid of the Education Department, his actions say otherwise. “Trump says he will give power back to the states. But he has also said he is prepared to use executive power to crack down on schools with policies that don’t align with his culture-war agenda,” my colleague Lora Kelley reported in November. Yesterday, Trump issued an executive order banning transgender athletes in women’s sports. To do so, he’s using—you guessed it—the power of the Education Department.

Other conservative priorities, such as shutting down diversity programs, probing and punishing anti-Semitism on campuses, and attacking affirmative action in admissions, are being run through the Education Department. These functions could be shifted elsewhere, including to the Justice Department, but Trump is still actively pursuing them.

And there’s the rub. A president could, in theory, get rid of the Education Department, but most presidents, including Trump, can’t and don’t want to get rid of the things it does. The situation is reminiscent of the federal grant freeze last month. Trump campaigned on cutting spending, and many people cheered. But once his administration tried to do it, swift backlash—including from Republicans in Congress—forced him to retreat. Slashing government spending is a popular idea in the abstract. The problem is that at some point you have to start cutting off the specific programs that people actually like and need.

Here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

Today’s News

A federal judge temporarily paused the Trump administration’s deadline for federal workers to accept a deferred resignation buyout.
The Justice Department agreed to temporarily restrict Department of Government Efficiency staffers from having access to the Treasury Department’s highly sensitive payment system.
In a Truth Social post, Trump wrote that his plan for Gaza would involve Israel turning Gaza over to the United States after the fighting ceases. He added that no U.S. soldiers would be needed.

Dispatches

Time-Travel Thursdays: Parenting in America keeps getting more intensive, Kate Cray writes. The philosophy is hard on parents and children alike.
The Weekly Planet: Trump is inheriting an environmental disaster, Zoë Schlanger writes.

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Evening Read

Don’t Make Small Talk. Think Big Talk.

By Arthur C. Brooks

As a rule, I avoid social and professional dinners. Not because I’m anti-social or don’t like food; quite the opposite. It’s because the conversations are usually lengthy, superficial, and tedious. Recently, however, my wife and I attended a dinner with several other long-married couples that turned out to be the most fascinating get-together we’ve experienced in a long time. The hostess, whom we had met only once before, opened the evening with a few niceties, but then almost immediately posed this question to the couples present: “Have you ever had a major crisis in your marriage?”

Read the full article.