With new Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon at the helm, the Trump administration’s plans to dismantle the federal agency are underway.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order March 20, which called for McMahon to “the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities while ensuring the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”
Shortly after the executive order was signed, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) — who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee — announced plans to introduce legislation to eliminate the department.
“I agree with President Trump that the Department of Education has failed its mission,” he wrote in a tweet. “Since the Department can only be shut down with congressional approval, I will support the President’s goals by submitting legislation to accomplish this as soon as possible.”
Other Republicans, including Reps. David Rouzer of North Carolina and Thomas Massie of Kentucky, introduced bills earlier this year in the House of Representatives to abolish the department.
Noreen Farrell, executive director of Equal Rights Advocates, a nonprofit organization that promotes women’s justice and gender rights, called the move an “executive overreach that’s going to harm millions of students across the country.”
“While the administration is claiming that this returns power to the states, it effectively removes critical federal oversight that ensures equal education for all students, regardless of gender, race, disability status or economic background,” she says. “This is disastrous. Obviously, we anticipate legal challenges, but the message it sends — that students in this country aren’t worth a fully functioning and endorsed Department of Education — is extremely troubling.”
As part of what the department called its “final mission,” it announced on March 11 a nearly 50% workforce cut, reducing the number of employees from 4,133 to 2,183. The affected workers are to be on administrative leave starting March 21 and receive full pay and benefits until June 9, and about 600 of those departing had “accepted voluntary resignation opportunities and retirement” over seven weeks, the department said in a press release.
The department said it “will continue to deliver on all statutory programs that fall under the agency’s purview, including formula funding, student loans, Pell Grants, funding for special needs students and competitive grantmaking.”
“Claiming that eliminating half the Department won’t affect its services — without any clear plan to redistribute the workload — is, at best, naive and, at worst, deliberately misleading,” Beth Maglione, interim president and CEO of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, said in a statement. “It also raises serious concerns about how billions of dollars in federal student aid will continue to be disbursed to students without interruption.”
Some observers argue that a workforce reduction could lead to positive outcomes.
[READ: The Education Department Cuts Nearly 2,000 Employees: What to Know]
“A 50 percent workforce reduction is sizeable and could very well be a good thing,” Neal McCluskey, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, wrote in a statement. “We don’t know how many people are actually needed to execute US ED’s jobs and it’s time to find out if it’s been a bloated bureaucracy all along.”
There’s been heightened scrutiny of the department over the past few years, with the rocky rollout of the simplified version of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid and the legal battle over student loan forgiveness under the Biden administration.
Here’s what eliminating the Education Department might mean for K-12 and higher education.
What Does the Department of Education Do?
Created in 1979 as a cabinet position under President Jimmy Carter, the Education Department disburses Title I funds to elementary and secondary schools with large low-income student enrollments; collects data on schools; oversees the recognition of accrediting agencies and programs that support higher education institutions; protects students against racial and sex-based discrimination; and manages student financial aid assistance programs, including loans and grants.
The department awarded $120.8 billion in federal loans, grants and work-study funds in fiscal year 2024 to more than 9.9 million college and career school students, according to an unaudited annual report by Federal Student Aid.
Will the Education Department Be Abolished?
Despite the executive order, eliminating the Education Department requires congressional approval.
It’s not a new idea. “Republicans have campaigned on getting rid of it and killing the agency since it was created,” says Gloria L. Blackwell, CEO of the American Association of University Women, a nonprofit that advances equity for women in higher education.
That opposition historically arises from a belief that authority to regulate education belongs with the states, since it’s not specifically given to the federal government by the Constitution. More recently, opposition has also come from other quarters, such as accusations of values indoctrination and long-term declines in student math and reading competency scores.
Some Republican lawmakers may vote against axing the department, says Kevin Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center and a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education. Many parents in Republican-controlled states, particularly rural areas, maintained support for the Education Department in past attempts to dismantle it, and elected representatives listened to those concerns.
But some observers feel the idea may be more plausible for the current administration.
There’s been a shift in the U.S. in which some people are “feeling that there’s too much control, too much oversight by the federal government in terms of education,” says Aron Boxer, founder and CEO of Diversified Education Services, an education consulting and tutoring company. “And because of that, the Trump administration coming in has this new initiative where they’re trying to … put everything to the states to make their own decisions.”
He adds that the COVID-19 pandemic brought the “idea of parents having more control in their children’s education more to the forefront.”
There’s been some discontent with the state of education. In a Gallup national survey released in February, 73% of respondents indicated they were somewhat or very dissatisfied with the quality of the nation’s public education system.
At the same time, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll in March, 60% of respondents opposed Trump’s plan to eliminate the Education Department.
“Scrapping the Department of Education would be chaotic, complicated, and it would surely result in damage to the smooth running of important programs for K-12 students and those at colleges and universities,” Welner says. “But moving people and programs from the Department of Education to other departments doesn’t in itself change what the federal government does. It’s those other proposals that change what the government does that are likely to be more impactful.”
What Happens to K-12 Education Without the Education Department?
Special Needs Protections
Dissolving the department doesn’t necessarily eliminate the federal education laws that states must follow, says Weade James, senior director of K-12 education policy for the Center for American Progress, a public policy and research advocacy organization.
For example, two notable policies would remain on the books, so long as Congress continues appropriating money for them: the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which provides federal funding for K-12 schools; and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which ensures students with disabilities are offered a free education tailored to their needs.
For IDEA funding, the federal government gives money to states based on a formula that factors in the number of students with disabilities. States then distribute that money to local school districts to provide special education services to eligible students, with the expectation that states will also contribute their own money to cover the full cost of services.
About 12% or 13% of the money used for students with special needs comes through federal IDEA funding, Welner says. If the Education Department is dissolved, this money would go to states as block grants — but the federal accountability for compliance could disappear, some say.
“What that means is (school) districts will be responsible for using that money however they choose, and hopefully it is the right way to serve students with disabilities,” James says. “There would be no oversight to ensure that those dollars are actually following and meeting the needs for students with IEPs and 504 plans.”
[Read: What Does the Education Department Do? A Look at the Agency Trump Wants Gone]
Title I Funding
Students from low-income families receive help through Title I of the ESEA. During fiscal year 2023, $18.4 billion was allocated for Title I funding. This money is typically used for educational technology, remedial instruction materials, internet and mental health services, among other things.
Similar to the IDEA, Title I funding would initially move to block grants if the Education Department were dissolved. Such a move would likely cause a difficult transition with significant confusion at the state and district level, resulting in delays or failures in getting money where it should go, Welner says. This could also hurt test scores, attendance and graduation rates, student behavior and engagement, he says.
“There’s a desire to get rid of some of the red tape and make it easier for states to use the money in a way that makes sense locally, but when that happens we end up seeing the money not getting to the students who need it most,” he says. “There’s a reason we have support systems in place for students. If you take them away, students will lose opportunities to learn.”
Welner says if the Education Department is abolished, Title I funds will almost certainly be slashed and states will have to replace that money.
Civil Rights Protections
Dissolving the Education Department could result in certain programs moving to different agencies, James says. For example, the department’s just-reduced Office of Civil Rights, which enforces federal laws against discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, disability or national origin in schools, could move under the direction of the Department of Justice.
“This would require parents to have the resources to pursue litigation to resolve any complaints,” she says. “That will create a lot more challenges for families to address civil rights disputes.”
With the most recent workforce reduction, the department’s Office of Civil Rights is reportedly “severely impacted,” James says. “Cuts to OCR staff and legal scholars responsible for protecting the civil rights of American students means that schools will have more leverage to discriminate against children without any oversight or accountability.”
What Happens to Higher Education Without the Education Department?
Federal Aid Programs
Abolishing the Education Department doesn’t mean federal student aid
programs would come to an end, experts say. These programs could instead be overseen by another federal agency or be dispersed to states. Federal student loans, for instance, may be moved to the U.S. Department of the Treasury or shifted to private, for-profit organizations.
“Prior to the election there was a lot of talk around devolving responsibility to individual states, but that notion is still very unclear at this juncture and enacting such changes would potentially be more complicated when it comes to higher ed versus K-12 education,” says Mike J. Sosulski, president of Washington College in Maryland. “No specific plans have been made public, though.”
Pell Grants — federal awards based on financial need — are unlikely to be affected, given their bipartisan support. But the new Congress may vote to slash funding for federal college access initiatives, such as work-study or public service loan forgiveness, Blackwell says.
Other experts argue that dissolving the agency won’t affect much. Many federal education programs predate the department, including ESEA — since renamed the Every Student Succeeds Act — and the Higher Education Act, says Frederick M. Hess, senior fellow and director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a public policy think tank in Washington, D.C.
“You can cut these programs dramatically without eliminating the department,” he says. “We could eliminate this department and have no impact on spending levels for these programs. The department is really just a home for some bureaucrats and bureaucratic machinery.”
Boxer says the department’s recent workforce reduction will “likely lead to delays, particularly in processing FAFSA forms and efficiently distributing aid.”
“Parents, students and schools should proactively prepare by applying early for financial aid and other DOE-administered programs; closely monitoring any communication regarding FAFSA or aid deadlines; and contacting individual colleges directly to discuss contingency plans for managing delays,” he says. “While critical funding sources remain intact, efficiency and responsiveness may suffer, so it’s wise to plan accordingly.”
Institutional Funding
The intention of the higher education proposals is “to actually free up money from going directly to the institutions themselves and allow a much more competitive environment for higher ed that don’t have the money to pay to the lobbyists to get some of the direct assistance that some of the larger or specialty universities get,” says Jeanne Allen, founder and CEO of the Center for Education Reform, which aims to expand educational opportunities leading to better economic outcomes.
[Read: Is College Worth the Cost? Factors to Consider.]
In the long run, she says, “an ambition, which every administration frankly has had, (is) to reduce the burdens and the bureaucracy on spending that eat up a lot of the money, open up the opportunities for a variety of different kinds of learning outside of your two- and four-year schools, and really insert some innovations that tie higher ed much more closely to workforce pathways or outcomes.”
However, some experts argue that eliminating the Education Department could create more challenges for institutions that rely more heavily on federal money, such as historically Black colleges and universities.
“If there’s uncertainty, if there’s delays in financial processing, then these colleges that require some type of funding for their infrastructure — just their general running of their institutions — could be at risk,” Boxer says. “When that happens, it has a top-down effect. College enrollment and access could drop.”
How to Navigate Changing Education Policies
Republicans and Democrats have historically held opposing philosophies about the role of the federal government in relation to states, with Republicans arguing any authority not explicitly outlined by the Constitution should remain with the states. This would allow decisions that affect daily life, such as education, to be decided by lawmakers at state and local levels rather than at the federal level.
Blackwell encourages families to stay informed and educate themselves on any policy changes.
“Don’t hesitate to reach out and ask questions,” she says. “Over the next few months and the next few years, certainly this is going to be changing and they need to make sure that they are doing what’s best for the future of their education and also for their professions down the road.”
Farrell emphasizes that only an act of Congress “can get rid of the Department Education fully so now is the time to engage with (your) elected representatives to make sure that that overreach of executive powers doesn’t happen and that there’s some congressional action to address this.”
“Really make your voices known about why government works when it comes to education and why it’s critical,” she says. “And they can do that in a lot of different ways, but it’s going to be really important that both the White House and Congress hear from parents and children themselves about how they view this.”
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The Dismantling of the Education Department originally appeared on usnews.com
Update 03/20/25: This article was published at an earlier date and has been updated with new information.
