Donald Trump鈥檚 decisive victory in the 2024 presidential election has given new life to longstanding Republican calls to abolish the U.S. Department of Education.
On the campaign trail and in his platform, Trump called for the federal agency鈥檚 elimination, that it鈥檚 an 鈥渁buse of your taxpayer dollars鈥� that allows schools to 鈥渋ndoctrinate America鈥檚 youth.鈥�
The Republican Party鈥檚 official platform called for shuttering the 45-year-old agency.
And Project 2025, the conservative policy document spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation and written by a number of former Trump aides and allies to the former president, also proposed scrapping the department and making major changes to the two major funding streams it oversees: converting funding for the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act into 鈥渘o-strings-attached鈥� block grants to states and ending Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which provides funding for schools with high populations of low-income students.
While eradicating the department has been a perennial wish for conservatives and is something Trump tried to do in his first term in the White House, proposals to make it happen have never gotten off the ground.
The conversations about it, however, make one thing clear: Many people don鈥檛 have a full understanding of what the federal Education Department does and how it affects K-12 schools, said Rachel Perera, a researcher at the Brown Center of Education Policy at the Brookings Institution.
鈥淭here doesn鈥檛 seem to be an understanding that in the U.S., most education policy around early childhood, K-12, higher ed. 鈥� the federal role is very narrowly defined,鈥� Perera said.
The federal Education Department doesn鈥檛 decide what schools can and cannot teach; that is largely determined by state lawmakers and local school boards. It also doesn鈥檛 allocate most of the funding that schools receive, which primarily comes from state and local funding formulas.
Here鈥檚 how the federal Education Department works and what it does for K-12 schools.
How was the Education Department created?
The federal government has long had a role in education.
President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, a law that provided funding to support equal access to education, in 1965, establishing Title I, which aims to support education of students living in poverty. Ten years later, in 1975, Congress enacted the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, to support states in meeting the needs of students with disabilities. That law was amended in 1990 to become the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act, known as IDEA.
On Oct. 17, 1979, then-President Jimmy Carter signed a law creating the U.S. Department of Education鈥攆ulfilling a campaign pledge he made to secure the endorsement of the National Education Association. Beforehand, all federal education policymaking and enforcement of federal education laws fell under the purview of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, which was renamed the Department of Health and Human Services when the law was enacted.
At the time, Carter said the goal of the department was to make educational issues a 鈥渢op-level priority,鈥� hold federal education programs accountable, streamline federal education funding, and ultimately give local communities control of their schools.
The department quickly faced opposition when President Ronald Reagan came into office. Reagan鈥檚 education secretary, Terrel H. Bell, issued a 91-page memo recommending that the agency be converted into a small foundation for conducting research. That memo, the first effort to abolish the department, didn鈥檛 lead to any real action, however.
What are the different offices in the Education Department?
The Education Department is broken down into various offices, which oversee specific programs. The offices with the most oversight of K-12 schools are:
- The Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, which oversees policy to support state agencies and school districts in improving preschool, elementary, and secondary school student achievement;
- The Office of English Language Acquisition, which works to improve academic outcomes and access for English Learners;
- The Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, which supports the education of students with disabilities;
- The Institute of Education Sciences, which facilitates research on educational issues and student academic performance;
- The Office for Civil Rights, which enforces laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex, race, religion, and disability status;
- And the Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education, which supports career preparation programs for K-12 students.
What does the Education Department do for K-12 schools?
At the most basic level, the department administers a budget of nearly $80 billion that covers programs addressing prekindergarten through postsecondary education.
The agency鈥檚 budget pays for a variety of education grant programs. The two largest for K-12 schools are Title I, an $18.4 billion program that sends extra money to schools with high populations of low-income students, and IDEA, a $14.2 billion program that helps schools pay for special education services for students with disabilities. IDEA lays out the requirements schools need to follow in providing special education.
The department also has a slew of smaller grants that support schools. The Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006, known as Perkins V, provides $1.4 billion annually to support career and technical education in K-12 schools. Title II, Part A of the Every Student Succeeds Act provides schools with around $2.2 billion in funding for training, professional development, and support for new teachers. And Title III of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is a nearly $900 million program that provides funding to support schools鈥� efforts to educate multilingual learners.
The federal Education Department has also stepped in to oversee supplemental funding for schools that Congress has approved in emergencies such as the Great Recession and the COVID pandemic.
The department distributed almost $190 billion to schools, approved through three acts of Congress in 2020 and 2021, to help them reopen from pandemic closures and support students鈥� academic recovery.
Even with these large federal grant programs, the U.S. Department of Education is not the primary funder of the nation鈥檚 schools. States and local governments provide the lion鈥檚 share of funding. In 2020-21, the most recent year for which federal data are available, the on public schools, and that share was elevated due to the infusion of COVID-relief funds.
Two other major federal education initiatives fall outside the U.S. Department of Education. The Department of Health and Human Services oversees the Head Start program for preschool-age children from low-income families. And the Department of Agriculture oversees the National School Lunch Program, which underwrites school meals.
Many of the department鈥檚 functions have to do with higher education. It issues student loans; it oversee the Federal Application for Free Student Aid, which helps students qualify for college financial aid; and the Pell Grant, which supports college students with 鈥渆xceptional financial need.鈥�
鈥淒o people know anything about the Department of Education? Maybe not. But have they ever heard of the Pell Grant? Probably so,鈥� said former Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, who served under former President George W. Bush.
How does the Education Department enforce civil rights law?
The other central task of the federal department is to identify, investigate, and resolve school violations of civil rights laws through its office for civil rights, commonly known as OCR.
Federal laws prohibit schools from discriminating against students or staff on the basis of sex, race, religion, and disability status.
The office for civil rights receives complaints from students, staff members, parents, or other community members alleging that a school has violated one or more of those civil rights laws鈥攃ommonly Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
The department then investigates the claim and determines whether the school has violated the law. If the department determines a school has violated the law, the school could be at risk of losing federal funding, but such a consequence is rare. Often, OCR will work with schools to help them come into compliance with civil rights laws before revoking funding.
The office for civil rights is a key function that affects how schools operate from day to day, Brookings鈥� Perera said.
鈥淎ll of those enforcement efforts do a lot of work to ensure that all students are able to access education environments free of discrimination,鈥� Perera said.
How the Education Department interprets civil rights laws has varied by presidential administration.
Most recently, the Biden administration issued revised rules to Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination at schools that receive federal funding, to explicitly include gender identity and sexual orientation in the definition of sex-based discrimination. That rule is currently on hold in 26 states鈥攁nd at individual schools throughout much of the rest of the country鈥攁fter states and others argued in a series of lawsuits that the new rules represented an overreach of the administration鈥檚 power.
Going forward, administrations may not be as willing to change interpretations of federal law. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled a 1984 decision that required courts to defer to federal agencies, like the Education Department, for 鈥渞easonable interpretations鈥� of federal law. That means the office for civil rights could have limited latitude in how it interprets and enforces civil rights laws going forward.
What role does the Education Department have in facilitating educational research?
Another primary function of the Education Department involves funding education research. The agency includes the Institute of Education Sciences, which oversees education statistics, research, and evaluation.
The institute is made up of the National Center for Education Statistics, the National Center for Education Research, the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, and the National Center for Special Education Research.
Each center collects and analyzes data on student performance, well-being, demographics, and any other information that can help researchers better understand the current state of education. It鈥檚 best known for administering the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or the Nation鈥檚 Report Card, which provides a nationwide snapshot of students鈥� academic performance in reading, math, science, and social studies.
鈥淲e have a very local education system in the U.S. and without these functions, we wouldn鈥檛 understand the scale and scope of inequality, which means we wouldn鈥檛 be well positioned to develop policies and practices and programs to remedy that inequality,鈥� Perera said.
How have different administrations used the Education Department?
Whether or not a president makes a difference for K-12 schools largely depends on how they use the Education Department.
Bush kick-started a new era in school accountability when he signed the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, an update to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. The law, which had bipartisan support, aimed to close achievement gaps between poor and minority students and their peers by scaling up the federal government鈥檚 role in school accountability.
It required states to test students in reading and math in grades 3-8 and set a goal of bringing all students to the 鈥減roficient鈥� level on those tests by the 2013-14 school year.
鈥淧resident Bush鈥檚 philosophy and mine was that if we鈥檙e going to spend money, billions and millions of dollars on behalf of a kind of civil rights and opportunity agenda, that we ought to get something for it,鈥� said Spellings, who served as education secretary from 2005 to 2009, during Bush鈥檚 second term.
Former President Barack Obama put his own spin on the main federal education law by signing the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015, which replaced No Child Left Behind. And before that, he launched Race to the Top, a $4 billion competitive grant program that rewarded states that embraced uniform, national standards; revamped data systems; dramatic school turnaround strategies; charter schools; and teacher evaluations based in part on student test scores.
Since then, the Trump and Biden administrations have focused less on increasing the federal role in K-12 schools. The Education Department in the Trump era, led by former Secretary Betsy DeVos, focused much of its attention on expanding and advocating for school choice.
In 2016, Trump proposed a $20 million federal voucher program, which never came to fruition. He also called for cutting funding for or fully eliminating the Education Department, but by the end of his first term, his administration had increased education funding by $5 billion, to around $73 billion.
The Biden administration has focused its K-12 efforts on pandemic recovery and its revision of Title IX rather than an ambitious agenda to rewrite education policies. It also had ambitious plans for student loan relief, which Congress and courts ultimately shut down, and has overseen the bungled implementation of the new FAFSA form, which aimed to modernize the process for applying for student aid but was riddled with technical defects and delays in its first year.
With Bush and Obama, 鈥渆ssentially we had 16 years of a kind of steady-as-you-go policy agenda supported and spoken about by the presidents,鈥� Spellings said. 鈥淭hose laws are still on the books, but it鈥檚 more of an era of local control.鈥�
