Trump wants to dissolve the Department of Education. Experts say it could change public schools

The U.S. Department of Education: Could it someday become a historical relic, or is it here to stay?

It's no secret that shuttering the agency is a cornerstone ambition for President-elect Donald Trump, who has pledged to prioritize "closing up" the DOE and "sending all education and education work it needs back to the states."

Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) co-leads Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk, both tasked with suggesting ways to dismantle bureaucracy and restructure federal agencies to improve efficiency, appear to be on board with the proposal as well, and it's gaining momentum.

Liberals argue the department provides stability and an opportunity to enforce more generalized policies – civil rights protections, reducing educational disparities and addressing systemic inequalities. Conservatives insist it's just another arm of an already monstrous bureaucracy, stifling innovation and falling short of its goal, and it needs to be severed. 

Established as a standalone agency in 1980, the Department of Education emerged from the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare under then-President Jimmy Carter, who sought to fulfill a key campaign promise to the National Education Association (NEA). However, its creation was met with criticism from lawmakers and educators who feared it might increase federal overreach or enforce policies that kowtowed to teachers' unions.

The concept of abolishing the Department of Education is nothing new. During his campaign, President Reagan supported the department's abolition, though his efforts – and the efforts of Republicans since – were unsuccessful. 

Despite these calls for dissolution, abolishing the agency is a politically daunting task requiring congressional approval, and it's broadly considered unlikely to happen.

Here are five ways eliminating the DOE could change public education:

Perhaps the most immediate change that abolishing the federal Department of Education would bring is the transfer of authority over schools to state and local governments, allowing schools to tailor policies to reflect more regional values and priorities.

"The federal government provides 10 percent of the money, but with it effectively sets more than half of policy for public schools," Max Eden, a senior fellow specializing in education at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), told Fox News Digital.

"If the Department were cut, the federal financial contribution would likely remain stable, but schools would be fundamentally more free to govern themselves according to local priorities and values," Eden added.

Interpretations of how this could manifest are divided. Critics caution that such decentralization might lead to disparities in educational standards and resources between regions. 

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, for instance, emphasized the importance of having "something like" the DOE to ensure "federal aid reaches the poorest students while protecting vulnerable learners' rights."

Michelle Exner, senior adviser at Parents Defending Education, took a different stance, defending decentralization by arguing that the DOE has prioritized bureaucracy over results. 

"Over the past four years, we have seen the Biden administration use the Department of Education to push their political agenda on children… Maintaining the status quo of mediocrity in America cannot be the option," she said in part, per a statement.

Jonathan Butcher, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, argues that eliminating federal oversight could reduce administrative burdens, telling Fox News Digital, "The Department of Education's primary responsibility is to move federal taxpayer money to states and districts, yet with every new rule and program, the agency creates more administrative work for state officials." 

Proponents of keeping the department emphasize its role in supporting a range of federally-funded programs they say would be affected by its absence. This includes Title I, which gives funds to state educational agencies to dole out to districts with high percentages of low-income students, IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) and the Child Nutrition Act, affecting school lunches for low-income students.

The Economic Policy Institute, for example, argued in 2022 that the education funding "needs an overhaul," insisting "federal government plays a small and insufficient role" in public school funding and that the current system is "inadequate and inequitable." Without federal oversight, critics of Trump's plan fear that disparities between higher-income and underserved school districts could widen. 

Butcher and others, however, argue that federal involvement has not effectively addressed inequities.

"The Department's activities have not helped close achievement gaps between different student groups – the gaps in reading and math between low income and upper income students have been the same for 50 years," he said.

He suggests that federal funding for programs like IDEA could be redistributed as block grants to empower states to make spending decisions based on local needs, while oversight of the program could be allocated to the Department of Health and Human Services.

Connor Boyack, president of the Libertas Network, a Libertarian think tank, echoes this sentiment, citing longstanding inefficiencies within the DOE.

"By any measure – the only thing that has increased is the size of the bureaucracy profiting off of this system," he said, citing the 1983 "A Nation at Risk" report. He supports dismantling the Department of Education, arguing it would allow resources to be managed more efficiently at the state level. 

The Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) currently enforces anti-discriminatory federal laws in schools with the goal of ensuring equal access and protection for students of all backgrounds. These include Title IX, which offers sex-based protection, and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which provides race-based protection, among others.

Some say dissolving the department could weaken oversight, leading to reduced protection for specific groups of students who could potentially face discrimination.

"When the Department of Education is concerned about a civil rights violation, they can announce that they're going to do an investigation for an institution. They can request documents," Dominique Baker, an associate professor at the University of Delaware, said, explaining a portion of the DOE's role in an article for NPR. "Generally speaking, institutions don't want to get on the bad side of the Department of Education."

Others insist this task, like others, should be reallocated to another bureaucratic agency in the name of efficiency. 

"I think that there's a lot of fear-mongering about what it would mean," Tim Villegas with the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education told a local outlet in Baltimore. "In the short term, if the Department of Education is dismantled, all of that funding would probably just go somewhere else and be administered somewhere else in the federal government."

Some experts argue that abolishing the Department of Education could put a wrench into college plans for underprivileged families, but others insist the financial aid functions of the DOE could easily be streamlined into other bureaucratic agencies.

"Pell Grants," "Direct Subsidized and Unsubsidized Loans" and "Parent PLUS Loans," which are currently managed by the department, which also oversees loan forgiveness programs, including Public Service Loan Forgiveness.

Critics of abolishing the department argue that shuttering it would create uncertainty for students who rely on these programs. 

Michelle Dimino, an education program director at the left-of-center think tank Third Way, told Inside Higher Ed., for instance, "You could very well end up in a system where college access is blocked off for students who have financial need, and that really would reverse the progress that’s been made over the past decade to create a system that had more open pathways into higher education for anybody who wants them.

"That is full-stop terrifying," she added. "I think the uncertainty alone would be a detriment to college access."

Those in favor of eliminating the department suggest the Treasury Department could absorb the DOE's loan and financial aid functions, similar to the proposal to delegate tasks to other agencies.

Fox News' Joshua Q. Nelson contributed to this report