Over the years, students have gone to great extents to research the rankings, classes, and costs of schools, but rarely its ballot sheet. Yet, the increasing political rhetoric of education may demonstrate a greater need to do so than ever before.
“I’m gonna close the Department of Education (DoE) and move education back to the states,” said Donald Trump in his rally campaign prior to his re-election in Pennsylvania, believing it would “empower parents to have more choice in their child’s education, improving academic excellence.”
The questions of “state vs. federal control” and “traditional vs. progressive reform” within education have assumed the DoE as the proxy for larger ideological battles during every election cycle. Today, Trump’s vision for education may shape new challenges and trends in America’s cultural, economic, and technological spheres.
The debate
Rich in congressional funding, the DoE handled $229 billion of the $9.7 trillion funds allocated to federal agencies in 2024. On the K-12 level, it handles IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) funding for students of disabilities and Title I funding for low-income schools. More crucially, over 75% of the department is focused on higher education, distributing loans and Pell Grants. Additionally, the Department’s Office of Civil Rights enforces Title IX, which protects students from discrimination based on gender.
Left-winged progressives view the DoE as essential for maintaining equitable education — acting as a safeguard against inequalities, providing accessible and quality schooling to students of “all backgrounds and every zip code.” Conversely, right-winged conservatives see the department as an “overreaching bureaucracy” pushing federalist ideologies onto schools to fuel policies that favor “social engineering” instead of “core academics.”
Put simply, while Americans agree on education’s role to better prepare students for the workforce, they differ on whether the federal government is onerous over state governments in providing educational protection to children.
Historical attempts at dismantling
Following Jimmy Carter’s creation of the Department of Education (DoE) in 1979, Reagan introduced his campaign to abolish the department in the 1980s, an advocacy that ultimately ended in disapproval by Congress. However, incentivized by a belief towards local control, reduced federal spending, and educational privatization, Reagan’s administration greatly reduced federal intervention in education through his endorsement of universal voucher programs – a school choice policy allowing parents to use public funding to pay for tuition at private schools.
Student loan programs as an inefficient budget loss
Under Trump, we see similarities in incentives for dismantlement.
While the DoE provides over $240 billion for local public schools, over $170 billion goes towards college student aid. Mitch Daniels, former director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget and president of Purdue University, is a vocal critic of the department’s management of its student loan program.
Following the COVID-19 lockdown, a pandemic repayment pause was initiated by the Biden Administration, leading to the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in government expenditures. In 2024, 64% of Republicans and Republican-leaning Americans reported a negative view of the DoE.
“It’s at least a contender for the most catastrophically failed federal domestic program that we’ve seen,” exclaimed Daniels, referring to the financial failure of DoE’s student loan programs. He adds that “without it[DoE], Pell Grant programs for underprivileged students can expand as we wouldn’t have all the rest of the department to pay for.”
Trump and “woke” culture
More interestingly, Trump’s dismantlement sees a new turn from Reagan’s initial attempt – a turn towards an attack on the symbol of education, rather than purely scorning its economic curtailments.
Under the Obama administration, the DoE saw efforts to push a more inclusive curriculum, including a greater understanding of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives. In recent years, the Biden administration has continued to reinforce such ideas, expanding policies like Title IX to protection of LGBTQ+ and other “gender-nonconforming” students.
Such ideologies, whether driven by democratic values or economic gains, have been thoroughly incorporated into education. Individuals who are socially aware of participating in or educating others of such culture have been labeled pejoratively as “woke.”
A recent catastrophe explicitly reflects Trump’s disapproval of DoE as a promoter of “woke culture.” Following the midair collision of a commercial jetliner killing 67 people on January 30th 2025, Trump seemingly blamed the accident on DEI policies at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). “We want the people that are competent,” Trump told the Guardian following the incident, seeking to condemn “Obama and Biden for including Black and Latino people in the federal workforce.”
Elon Musk, one of Trump’s greatest vocal and financial supporters, shares Trump’s ambitions. Aside from prioritizing efficiency through his privatized online school, Ad Astra, eliminating “woke culture” seems to be personal for Musk. He went on to call his child “dead” after being “tricked into providing gender-affirming care for daughter Vivian Musk (male at birth).”
Utilizing X as a platform to express his discontent, Musk indicated in an X forum last year that “the Education Department was threatening to withhold money from school districts that refused to adopt ‘toxic, self-hating racial and gender ideologies’.” Days before Trump’s election, Musk shared a meme on X featuring President Carter — reading: “In 1979, I created the Education Department. Since then, America went from 1st to 24th in education.”
A religious new wave
In a recent The New Yorker article titled “How Religious Schools Became a Billion-Dollar Drain on Public Education,” author Alec MacGillis demonstrates the role of religious centers in expanding private-school vouchers – a policy championed by Trump intended to benefit low-income students. However, MacGillis warns that such expansion is “threatening to become a nationwide money grab” as private schools continue to raise tuition prices, capitalizing on the new funding opportunity.
Likewise, Trump has signaled significant support for religion in schools, seeking to “Make America Pray Again.” This is seen both vocally – through encouraging prayers in classrooms. And literally – through endorsing “Trump Bibles,” a ‘super bible’ conjoining the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence into one book selling $60 each.
Oklahoma state schools superintendent Ryan Walters, a supporter of Trump’s policies, mandated that schools share a video “where he announces an Office of Religious Liberty and Patriotism” and the purchase of “500 Trump Bibles for AP Government classrooms across the state.”
“This is stunning to me,” says Arne Duncan, the secretary of education for seven years under Obama, referring to supporters like Walters who uses “taxpayer money to purchase Trump Bibles.” Duncan adds that the weaponization of education for political gain is only doing “a great disservice to our country’s families…children…and economy.”
Linda McMahon and the feasibility of a DoE abolishment
Linda McMahon is Trump’s newly elected Secretary of Education. The director of the Brown Center On Education Policy, John Valant, labels McMahon’s election as “ironic” given her low expertise in education policy and the administration’s goal to dismantle the DoE altogether. Regardless, Valant suggests a complete abolishment as “very unlikely,” given the requirement for an act of Congress, low democratic support, and likely Republican opposition to the idea.
Many agree that eliminating the DoE would be catastrophic for public school students. Setbacks are especially prominent for those with disabilities as handing power to states would fuel stark inequalities in funding allocation — overfunding wealthy areas and neglecting ones with greater needs.
This problem is echoed by other district superintendents like Shari Camhi. While federal funding only accounts for 1.14% of local education expenditure, “if we lose that money, we lose programs, we lose the ability to support those students in need – those under Title I and below the poverty line,” said Camhi in an interview with Bloomberg. She adds that a replacement for such funding is impossible as “a great percentage of state funding also comes from the federal government.”
Education & Project 2025: A philosophical view on America’s moral divide
Project 2025 — a collection of policies developed by The Conservative Heritage Foundation connected to Trump’s vision – has proposed phasing out Title I – funding “for low-income students over a 10-year period” and converting other programs to “no-strings-attached formula block grants,” leaving students of low-income and marginalized communities in segregation.
Why have people voted for Trump despite the alarming setbacks of his campaign policies?
Matthew Cantor’s “Forget the pundits – here’s how philosophers see America’s moral divide over Trump” provides an interesting answer – labeling Trump’s voters as simply “voting against the status quo” and “desperate for any type of change.”
Ironically, while these voters mainly consist of populist Americans in need of financial support, Trump’s vision for education seems to point ever more toward a future society of “Winners and Losers” rather than the promised “America for Everybody.”
Written by Julia Jiang
