President Donald Trump has expressed his mission to dismantle the Department of Education (DOE) through an executive order in the coming weeks, though its likelihood remains low.
The DOE was first introduced by President Andrew Jackson as a way to collect important statistics and data regarding the nation’s schools, and it was reestablished in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter as a cabinet-level agency.
Since its origination, the department has gone through significant milestones with various Acts passed in order to better benefit students, such as Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act designed to protect disabled students.
As of today, the department is used to regulate and oversee student loans, federal funding for low-income students, special education programs, and other areas.
The current president opposes the Department because of his belief that the Federal Government should not have control over education policies, and that instead of a centralized system, decision -making is best left up to individual states and localities.
Trump has explained his plans to move some of the DOE’s major functions to other Departments, such as administering loans, which he said should be handled by the United States (U.S.) Department of Treasury and civil rights infractions to the Department of Justice.
Trump has called the Department a “con” when he was informed that the U.S. is ranked No. 1 in price per student, but No. 40 in education’s ranking worldwide.
The wide discrepancy was displayed in the Nation’s Report card, fueling the push for the department’s closure.
Its dismantlement is not probable due to the fact that it requires an act of Congress, so Trump would need a supermajority, or 60 out of 100 senators. The Senate is currently a 53-47 majority, so those in favor would need at least seven Democrats to also vote to abolish it.
Because of this, Trump has signed two educational executive orders, one being the removal of federal funding from K-12 schools that teach critical race theory (CRT) and the other being to support school choice.
Executive action, though perhaps not exactly conducive of the agency’s destruction, could direct it to begin to wind itself down.
Trump, however, is not the first president to attempt this. President Ronald Reagan gave an attempt to remove it, and President Bush reformed it with the No Child Left Behind Act.
The department, which has 4,400 employees, the smallest amount in cabinet-level departments, was given a budget of $238 billion in the 2024 fiscal year, making it another target of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) as the agency cut out more than $100 million in grants to fund diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) training.
