Two months into his second term, President Donald Trump is fulfilling his promise to eliminate the Department of Education.
On March 11, Trump fired half of the agency’s workforce. On Thursday, he signed an executive order mandating its closure altogether.
Amid the upheaval, The Chronicle broke down many of the questions surrounding the Trump administration’s push to reimagine the federal government’s approach to education policy, including what the embattled agency does, why it has come under fire and whether its elimination will stand.
What’s in the new executive order?
The order, “Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States and Communities,” directs the secretary of education to shutter the agency while still “ensur[ing] the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs and benefits on which Americans rely.”
Trump argues that the Education Department is costly and ineffective, pointing to $200 billion in federal funds allocated during the COVID-19 pandemic and $60 billion in annual school funding alongside historic lows in American reading and math scores. Instead, he asserts that the agency’s main functions “can, and should, be returned to the states.”
The order also includes a provision to ensure that all remaining agency funds are allocated in “rigorous compliance” with federal law, including recent policies mandating that recipient institutions terminate policies related to diversity, equity and inclusion or “promoting gender ideology.”
Can Trump completely abolish the department?
In a word, no. The president cannot dissolve a federal agency solely through an executive order; that power lies with Congress.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt clarified Thursday that the agency will not be completely shut down but instead operate in a much smaller form to administer “critical functions.” The executive order notes that the department’s secretary must oversee its closure only “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.”
The administration has already tried to hobble the department without terminating it entirely by implementing sweeping funding and staffing cuts. However, some of those moves have run into legal challenges, with a federal judge rejecting cuts to Education Department programs that carry out congressionally mandated functions earlier this week.
Fully eliminating the agency is likely not in the president’s interest anyway, as he has publicly outlined several educational policy goals that require staff to implement and enforce.
Whether the department can execute those goals effectively at a reduced size remains to be seen. Several sub-departments currently responsible for carrying out many of the administration’s new initiatives, such as the Office for Civil Rights, were already experiencing backlogs before new staffing cuts were announced.
Still, if the Trump administration can offload those responsibilities to other agencies without facing challenges in the courts, it may be able to achieve progress on its education agenda without a standalone education department.
What does the Education Department do?
The agency’s responsibilities lie primarily in collecting data on U.S. schools, disbursing funds for educational purposes and overseeing federal education policy.
The department oversees two congressionally mandated programs tracking education practices in the U.S. Information on colleges and universities, such as admissions practices, graduation rates and financial aid allocation, is reported through the National Center for Education Statistics’ Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. For K-12 schools, the department tracks student performance in areas like reading, math, geography, science and history through the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often called the “Nation’s Report Card.”
The majority of the agency’s work, however, pertains to funding.
The Education Department houses the Federal Student Aid office, which administers the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and manages roughly $1.6 trillion in aggregate federal student loan debt. In addition to loans, the office distributes work-study funding and grants to students who demonstrate “exceptional financial need” or intend to teach in “high-need field[s].” According to its website, the office processes roughly 17.6 million FAFSA forms and allocates approximately $120.8 billion each year.
The Education Department also contributes some funding to the nation’s public schools, though state and local governments are responsible for the overwhelming majority.
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Lastly, the department has an Office for Civil Rights that enforces compliance with federal law for recipients of Education Department funds. The office investigates claims of Title IX violations and reports data on “leading civil rights indicators related to access and barriers to educational opportunities” for K-12 schools.
Prior to changes enacted by the Trump administration, the department had the smallest workforce of the 15 Cabinet agencies but the third-largest discretionary budget. Its work is overseen by a presidentially appointed secretary; North Carolina native Linda McMahon, a longtime business executive with little experience in education, was confirmed by the Senate to the position March 3.
Why is Trump opposed to the agency?
Aside from the complaints regarding efficiency outlined in the new executive order, the president has framed much of his criticism of the department around the need to eliminate what he defines as “woke ideology” from American schools, a perspective that has picked up steam within the Republican Party in recent years.
The anti-DEI movement gained momentum in June 2023 when the Supreme Court overturned race-based affirmative action in college admissions. The practice — created to account for long-running discrimination in education and employment practices on the basis of race and gender — was deemed unconstitutional on the grounds that universities’ admission practices allowed students to “obtain preferences on the basis of race alone” in violation of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
Following the ruling, conservative advocacy groups across the country filed a flurry of lawsuits aimed at corporate and government diversity initiatives. Republican politicians also began introducing legislation at the state level to compel universities and other educational institutions to abandon diversity initiatives.
Trump soon took up the call. On the campaign trail as early as July 2023, he asserted that “academics have been obsessed with indoctrinating America's youth” and pledged to “remov[e] all DEI bureaucrats” from institutions of higher education. In October 2023, he promised to dismantle the Education Department and turn its responsibilities over to state governments, asserting they would “do a much better job.”
Zoe Kolenovsky is a Trinity junior and news editor of The Chronicle's 120th volume.