Forty-five years after Ronald Reagan promised to abolish the Department of Education (DOE), President Trump, in a packed East Room full of students, teachers, parents, education advocates, and governors from across the country, signed an executive order to begin the process of shuttering the department.
The DOE was created by Congress, so it cannot be eliminated entirely by executive order. Congressional action is required, and President Trump lacks the votes. In true Trump fashion, he has directed secretary of Education Linda McMahon to dismantle it from within and transfer authority back to the states. Those functions of the DOE that are based on federal statutes will be transferred to other departments. The order also directs that no remaining DOE funds can be used to advance DIE or gender ideology.
Since the department was established in 1979, it has thrown at least $1 trillion down the rat hole with little to show for it. In a powerful letter, “Our Department’s Final Mission,” Secretary McMahon explained to her staff that “student outcomes have consistently languished,” alluding to NAEP scores showing that less than a third of U.S. students today are “proficient” in the core subjects of reading and math.
Shutting down the department has already begun — albeit slowly. About half of the 4,100 workers have been laid off. More than a billion dollars in contracts or grants have been canceled. Many of these funded left-wing ideologies taught in classrooms, including diversity, inclusion, and equity (DIE) and radical sex, that have drawn nationwide parent protests.
Pell Grants, student loans, and special education will remain and be fully funded. The nearly $1.7 trillion in federally backed student loans and Pell Grants will be transferred to the Small Business Administration (SBA). The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) will be transferred to Health and Human Services (HHS). Other departments to which various functions might be shifted include Labor, State, Interior, Justice, Commerce, and the Bureau of Indian Education.
In a previous executive order, President Trump banned K–12 schools from teaching anti-American or subversive content, gender ideology, and Critical Race Theory. Alyza Harris points out that this presidential order has a far greater reach than education, specifically biomedical research and the funding for the National Institute of Health (NIH). It cancels “federal grants for diversity-related projects and places a cap on indirect cost payments — funds previously used by universities under the pretense of supporting research infrastructure but often diverted into administrative overhead.”
Federal funds are often offset at the state and local levels by reduced state and local funding. A statistical analysis by Nora Gordon of the University of California, San Diego found that whereas Title I is supposed to steer money to poor school districts, state and local governments actually used the federal funds in place of their own funding of poor schools.
Despite the unconstitutionality of federal involvement in education and the oath taken by lawmakers to uphold the Constitution, numerous education statutes are embedded in various departments, which has created a sprawling, tangled system. Moving unconstitutional programs out of the DOE to other departments solves nothing except to preserve the unconstitutional federal role in education policy.
The policy paper by the Heritage Foundation, “Mandate for Leadership: Project 2025,” recommends that the Trump administration abolish the DOE by passing the “Department of Education Reorganization Act.” Responsibilities would be transferred to other departments, and “employees whose positions are determined to be essential to the mission would move with their constituent programs” to the new departments, further entrenching the bureaucratic personnel. The chessmen would be moved around on the board, with programs restructured in new departments and federal control expanded. Tracking of the programs would be more difficult.
Multiple laws permitting federal intervention in education must be repealed instead of shuffled to other departments, particularly these statutes: the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA, formed the bedrock of current federal education control), the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA, codified Common Core into federal law, redefined Common Core as Social Emotional Learning), the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the Higher Education Act (HEA), and the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA, government-controlled Soviet-style workforce development).
Other federal mandates that have exerted powerful control are the Head Start Act (Department of Health and Human Services, centralizes preschool standards), Indian education programs (Department of the Interior), the school lunch program (Department of Agriculture), the Education Sciences Reform Act (Department of Education, increases student data collection), and various other programs (Department of Defense). Without the total repeal of these laws and all others allowing federal intervention, government control will continue.
If abolishing the DOE is to be successful, then a different strategy from Project 25 must be executed.
U.S. Parents Involved in Education (USPIE) has developed a five-step strategic blueprint, which the group has shared with Washington policymakers. Its comprehensive plan actually abolishes federal control over education instead of moving the chessmen around.
- Send all program management and funding to the states.
- Repeal all laws permitting federal intervention in education, starting with ESSA.
- Privatize college loan programs through savings and loan institutions.
- Eliminate all offices and divisions in the U.S. Department of Education and related spending.
- Reduce federal tax collection, shifting education revenue collection entirely back to the states.
At the state level, there is already an infrastructure — a “shadow DOE” — with tens of thousands of employees who oversee and manage federal education programs. States have numerous food programs that could incorporate the federal lunch program. Administering the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) can be moved to an independent nonprofit research institute, as it was previously.
Although states have pre-K programs, it is not recommended that Head Start programs be incorporated. According to government studies, the program has not improved the school readiness of low-income children over more than 60 years. Under ESSA, Head Start is now tied to national preschool standards (Common Core for Tots) and psychosocial standards.
The Department of Education has been highly successful at what it was intended to do. Established as political payback to teachers’ unions for support of Jimmy Carter. Government control over what children are taught and how they think. Dumbing down of students. Control of education at the state and local levels. At this point, totalitarianism can readily be imposed on a dumbed down, compliant population.
Education has been weaponized and become a national security threat. There cannot be any question as to whether the DOE should be abolished, all federal statutes allowing federal intervention repealed, and total control returned to the states, free of any federal funding. The future of a free America depends upon this.
Carole Hornsby Haynes, education policy and curriculum adviser, historian, classical pianist, and entrepreneur. Additional articles can be found at www.drcarolehhaynes.com, chaynes@drcarolehhaynes.com.
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