In the months leading up to the 2024 election and in the time since, one prominent education-related question continues to arise: Will Trump abolish the Department of Education?
Recent video evidence from the man himself suggests the answer to this question is yes. Citing the insanely high costs of education in this country and the poor results they provide, the president-elect insisted that the Department of Education (ED) must be closed and its duties sent back to individual states.
Naturally, this news—particularly given its proximity to the wellbeing of our children—is leaving many very worried. But sometimes fear comes just because we don’t really understand what’s involved.
Given that reality, it seems prudent to ask, “What exactly does the Department of Education do?” Furthermore, “What would be the implications for our children if it shut down?”
A recent article from TIME Magazine provides an excellent and concise answer to that first question, showing that ED has three main functions:
The Department takes on numerous functions: designating federal aid through Title I, which gives state and local funding for schools serving low-income families, handing out Pell Grants, and regulating student loan relief through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program or income-based repayment plans.
Let’s start with that first one: Title I. This program, which provides federal funds for low-income schools, was inaugurated in 1965—15 years before the Department of Education was established. So it seems this program can be administered without the oversight of ED, or at least with less bureaucracy than we currently have.
A document from the Minnesota Legislature shows that federal funds were forecasted to make up just less than 15% of the state’s education funding in 2022 and a mere 7% in 2025 (see chart below). And that 2022 estimate may be higher than normal, for at that time many states were still receiving “federal funds including permanent moneys and one-time federal funding for things like the COVID response,” the document explains.
COVID, many of us will recall, left us with many unpleasant and harmful mandates that worked their way into the classroom, including masks or even digital learning (or lack thereof). One can’t help but wonder if those mandates would have been less prevalent had federal monies not been at stake.
It’s not likely that federal education funds would go away entirely even if the Department of Education does get shut down. But given the relatively small amount of federal funds devoted to our schools, and given the strings that often come with them, is it possible our schools and students would be better off without them?
It’s certainly something that deserves some consideration, especially since the Department has been involved in some very unpopular education interference in recent years.
I’ll spare you the full list of those things, except to cite the recent example of parents being called “domestic terrorists” when they dared challenge education policies at their local school board meetings. None other than ED Secretary Miguel Cordona was involved with this suppression attempt made by the National School Boards Association.
But let’s move on to consider the other two areas ED oversees: Pell Grants and Student Loan Relief. Ironically, these are both areas that have to do more with higher education than grades K-12.
Attending college really wasn’t on the radar for most Americans until recent decades. In 1980, the year ED was established, only about 12 million students enrolled in higher education. Today, that number is over 19 million. One can’t help but wonder if the Department’s role in Pell Grants and Student Loan Relief has helped that number increase.
“But that’s good!” you may say. “We want our students to attend college!”
Sure, that may be good, but consider that historically, most American students just got a K-8 education, with only some going on to high school—much like what happens with college today.
One could also argue that the high school education those students of yore received was much more rigorous than the material studied in today’s colleges.
Have you ever looked at the old curriculum those kids had to study or the high school entrance exams they had to take?
Most adults today would be extremely triggered were we asked to read the volumes of difficult literature, work the mental arithmetic, or conjugate the Greek and Latin verbs that grade school and high school students of yesteryear were routinely asked to do.
Consider also what would happen if we returned to this more rigorous education in the younger grades. Doing so would enable more students to pursue Minnesota’s state-based Post-Secondary Education Options (PSEO), giving them both a head start on their college career and saving them money on college tuition, meaning less debt and less need for the federal government to help with student loan relief or Pell Grants.
Would our schools have less money to work with if we took the federal government out of the equation? Some, yes. They would also have fewer expenses associated with federal mandates and the other strings that come with federal funds.
Furthermore, having less money doesn’t automatically mean our children would have less of an education, particularly if more states passed Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), allowing state tax dollars to follow students to the schools of their choice. Doing so would give parents more options, would allow students to be in education situations that actually fit their needs, and would also encourage a more wise and frugal spending of funds, enabling families to get better education for less.
Keep in mind that many Minnesota public school districts are spending $20,000 or more per student per year. Proposed ESA legislation in Minnesota would provide a little over $7,000 per student who opted out of the current system.
The reality is, shutting down the Department of Education isn’t the end of the world. A little creative thinking can generate a number of ideas that could actually lead to innovative education ideas for the betterment of our students as long as we restore parents to the driver’s seat of their children’s educations.
But of course, the betterment of students wasn’t the goal of the Department of Education in the first place; in reality, it was created to please the teachers’ unions. But we seem to conveniently forget that little detail, don’t we?
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Image Credit: Flickr-NCinDC, (CC BY-ND 2.0)
