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President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday in an effort to “begin eliminating the federal Department of Education.” With the stroke of his pen, he officially set in motion a plan to shutter the 46-year-old agency, as he said, “once and for all.”
But the order stops short of immediately closing the department, which cannot be done without congressional approval. Rather, according to the text of the order released by the White House, it directs Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities while ensuring the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”
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At the signing, Trump said federal Pell Grants (a common type of federal undergraduate financial aid), Title I funding and resources and funding for children with disabilities would be “preserved in full and redistributed to various other agencies and departments.”
“But beyond these core necessities, my administration will take all lawful steps to shut down the department,” he said, adding that he’d do so “as quickly as possible.”
The move still promises to upend the key functions the department performs in the broader education system, which include oversight of the federal student loan portfolio, civil rights enforcement in schools and the distribution of billions of dollars to help impoverished and disabled students.
Several big questions about the Department of Education’s future remain unanswered. But there is still a significant amount known about the agency’s history and duties — as well as the many plans conservatives have circulated for decades to unwind the agency.
In 1979, Democratic President Jimmy Carter signed legislation that made the Department of Education a Cabinet-level agency. Until that point, the government had a Department of Health, Education and Welfare, created during the Eisenhower administration.
Conservatives have been clamoring to abolish it for more than 40 years — essentially since it was created. Carter’s successor, President Ronald Reagan, vowed to shut it down one year after it opened — and Republicans have basically repeated that call since.
The Education Department is one of the smallest Cabinet-level departments. Its $268 billion appropriation last year represented 4% of the U.S. budget. McMahon announced earlier this month a plan to cut roughly half of the agency’s staff.
Among its most prominent duties, the agency manages the $1.6 trillion federal student loan portfolio for college and postsecondary students. It also distributes billions of dollars in funding for K-12 schools through programs that serve more than 50 million students in nearly 100,000 public schools and 32,000 private schools.
That funding includes more than $15 billion for thousands of so-called Title I schools — schools that receive federal dollars to help low-income families. And it includes more than $15 billion in funding for programs — under the auspices of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which provides grants to states for the education of children with disabilities — that ensure disabled students have access to a free and appropriate public education.
The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights enforces laws aiming to prevent discrimination in schools, and the agency’s Institute of Education Sciences runs data collection, statistics and research monitoring student outcomes.
The vast balance of power on education, however, still lies with states and local districts, which fund the bulk of K-12 education and set all curriculums.
The U.S. Department of Education has no say in curriculum matters. It does not set requirements for enrollment and graduation in schools, nor does it have a say in the selection or use of school or library books, textbooks or resources.
Schools that receive federal money through Title I programs and IDEA must meet specific conditions and maintain specific reporting rules. Conservatives have long claimed that those requirements are arduous and have pushed for allowing states to have flexibility and freedom to spend the money as they wish.
Even though Trump cannot fully end the Department of Education himself, McMahon agreed at her confirmation hearing that the administration hopes to present a plan that Congress would support, and Republicans in the House have introduced various plans that seek to eliminate the department. Still, with narrow Republican majorities in the House and Senate, it’s unlikely to move forward.
Yet short of that, the administration has other ways to shrink the department’s footprint.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said ahead of the executive order’s signing that “critical programs will be protected” and that, specifically, student loans and federal Pell Grants would continue to be handled by the department. In addition, a senior administration official said Wednesday night that Title I, student loans and students with disabilities — who rely on IDEA funding — will not be affected.
But it remains unclear how existing services would not be interrupted as the agency is dismantled.
Education advocates have long warned that major cutbacks would dramatically affect the federal government’s enormous student loan portfolio and Title I and IDEA funding. What these cuts would mean for groups who rely on that funding remains one of the biggest questions to emerge after news first broke that the Trump White House was looking to eliminate the agency.
One possibility is that the new framework for education policy could take its cues from the many plans that conservative education activists have circulated for decades on how they’d like to see the department disemboweled. Those plans largely center on transferring key functions of the department to other federal agencies, even though some education experts contend that even those transfers would require congressional approval.
One House bill introduced in January by Rep. David Rouzer, R-N.C., proposes transferring most of the department’s responsibilities to other agencies. Student loan programs would go to the Treasury Department, for example, and job training programs to the Labor Department.
The bill also proposes that the federal government be allowed to provide nearly all other education funding it currently gives to states with almost no conditions or reporting requirements attached.
One plan from February touted by officials at the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research pushed for transferring civil rights enforcement issues in public schools to the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Education advocates have warned that moving those responsibilities to the DOJ would likely result in fewer investigations and less enforcement, because it would mean saddling a smaller team with even more responsibilities. The Justice Department also has discretion in which cases it investigates, whereas the Education Department is required to investigate complaints alleging discrimination within the past 180 days. (The Trump administration’s layoffs at the Education Department earlier this month greatly impacted the agency’s Office for Civil Rights.)
That plan also advocated for spinning off the federal student loan portfolio into an independent financial entity.
Meanwhile, Project 2025 — which pushed for abolishing the whole agency — also advocated for ending Title I funding in phases. It also proposes ending student debt cancellation programs.
Other advocates for conservative education policy have said the federal government should convert most of the funding it gives to states for K-12 programs into block grants, a form of funding that comes with fewer rules and less federal oversight.
But public education advocates have warned that kind of shift could allow red states to pour dollars into private schools, which do not have to abide by federal education civil rights laws.
Under some other GOP proposals, Title I funding for the poorest schools would shift to allow poor students to take that money to private schools if they choose.
In February, a dozen top education officials from GOP-controlled states pitched McMahon on giving out federal school funding as block grants. Those Republicans said they wanted to be allowed to shift funding to support “state-driven initiatives” and “alternative spending approaches,” and asked McMahon to grant them waivers on certain federal requirements that come with their allocations. Red states typically rely more heavily on federal education funding than blue ones.
Private schools that do not receive federal funding are exempt from civil rights laws, such as those barring discrimination based on a student’s race, gender or disability. Private academies also do not have to provide individualized education plans to children with learning disabilities. It’s unclear whether any of the federal civil rights protections overseen by the Department of Education would apply if states used federal dollars to support private K-12 schools under their proposed block grant schemes.
Adam Edelman is a politics reporter for NBC News.
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