President-elect Donald Trump during the election campaign Repeated threats from Disband the US Department of Education (DOE), on the basis that the federal education apparatus is “Inciting youth with inappropriate racial, sexual and political material“
“One of the things I would do very quickly in the administration is to close the Department of Education in Washington, D.C. and send all education and training jobs back to the states.” Trump outlined his education policy goals in a 2023 video. “We want them to manage our children’s education because they will do much better than that. You can’t do worse.”
It won’t be easy for Trump to close the department, but it’s not impossible — and even if the DOE stays open, Trump could certainly radically change education in the United States. Here’s what’s possible.
Can Trump really close the DOE?
Technically, yes.
However, “it will take an act of Congress to figure it out,” Don Kettle, professor emeritus and former dean of the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy, told Vox. “It would take an act of Congress to radically restructure it. And so the question is whether there will be an appetite on the Hill to abolish the department.”
That’s not such an easy prospect, though, as Republicans appear poised to take narrow control of the Senate and House. Jal Mehta, a professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, told Vox, because repealing the section “would require 60 votes unless Republicans repealed the filibuster.”
Without the filibuster rule, a simple majority is required to pass legislation, but senators have been hesitant to get rid of it in recent years. In place of the filibuster, Republicans would need some Democratic senators to join their efforts to kill the section. Democratic senators are unlikely to support such a move.
That means the push to unwind the department is likely largely symbolic. And that’s the best-case scenario, John Vaillant, director of the Brookings Institution’s Brown Center on Education Policy, told Vox. According to Valeant, dismantling it would simultaneously damage the US education system and fail to achieve Trump’s stated goals.
Closing the department “would cause havoc across the country,” Vaillant said. “It will cause terrible pain. It will cause terrible pain in parts of the country represented by Republicans in Congress.”
Much of that pain will likely fall on the nation’s most vulnerable students: poor students, students from rural areas, and students with disabilities. That’s because the department’s civil rights powers help support state education systems in providing special resources to these students.
Moreover, what Trump and MAGA activists claim the agency is responsible for – such as teaching critical race theory and LGBTQ “ideologies” – is not actually the purview of the DOE; Issues such as curriculum and teacher selection are already the domain of state education departments. And according to Valeant, only 10 percent of federal public education funds flow to state boards of education. The rest comes primarily from tax sources, so states and local school districts already control much of the funding structure of their particular public education systems.
“I was a little surprised that the US Department of Education has become such a lightning rod here, because I don’t know how many people have no idea what the department actually does,” Vallant said.
Even without literally closing the doors on federal agencies, there could be ways that the Trump administration could hollow out the DOE and do significant damage, Vaillant and Kettle said.
Administration may require agencies to cut the roles of agency personnel, especially those who Ideologically disagree with the administration. It may hire officers with limited (or no) educational skills, which hinders the department’s day-to-day operations.
Trump officials may also seek changes to the department’s higher education practices. The department is one of several state and private organizations involved in college accreditation, for example — and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) threatened He believes universities are too “vigilant” to rig the accreditation process against them.
Finally, Trump can use the department’s leadership role to influence policy indirectly: “There’s power that comes from just communicating to the states what you want to see” being taught in schools, Valiant said. “And there are many State leaders Those across the country seem poised to follow that lead.”
Trump’s plans for the department will become clearer when the administration nominates an education secretary. Once that person is vindicated, Kettle said, “they’ll get back to competing on the issue.”
