Eliminating U.S. Education Department
What They Do and What is Stratford Bracing For
By Barbara Heimlich
Editor
Other Sources: National Education Association; National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators; Associated Press; Steven Hernandez, Executive Director of ConnCAN; Connecticut Department of Education Commissioner Charlene Russell Tucker
CNN obtained a draft of the order, which reads: “The experiment of controlling American education through Federal programs and dollars—and the unaccountable bureaucrats those programs and dollars support—has failed our children, our teachers, and our families.”
As Connecticut’s own Linda McMahon was confirmed to lead the department last week, state education leaders and advocates were already bracing for her to carry out Trump’s agenda in slashing a department they say is critical to public education.
Hours after she was confirmed, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon emailed staff and told them to prepare for their “final mission”: dismantling the U.S. Department of Education.
Numerous reports indicate that President Trump plans to make it official with an executive order, but the White House at least tentatively paused release of the order after considerable blowback. Every indication—including McMahon’s communication—makes it clear that the administration’s effort to dismantle the Department of Education will proceed.
“Trump and Musk have aimed their wrecking ball at public schools and the futures of the 50 million students in rural, suburban, and urban communities across America,” said NEA (National Education Association) President Becky Pringle. “Congress created the Department of Education, and only Congress has the power to end it. And the vast majority of Congress—including 60 House Republicans—rejected gutting public education last session, knowing it would only hurt our students.”
Here’s a look at what the Education Department does and doesn’t do – and how much of it is protected by acts of Congress:
Sending money to U.S. public schools
Most public school funding comes from state and local governments. The federal government, in general, provides only a small fraction of schools’ overall funding – between 6 and 13%, according to a 2018 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
Two of the most important federal funding streams to public schools are:
- Title I, which provides money to help districts that serve lower-income communities. In 2023, the Education Department received more than $18 billion for Title I.
- IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), which provides money to help districts serve students with disabilities. In FY 2024, the department received more than $15 billion for IDEA.
Both of these funding streams were, like the department itself, created by separate acts of Congress: Title I was signed into law in 1965, and IDEA was signed into law in 1975. They cannot be unwound except by Congress. Large changes to either are unlikely, as the money enjoys broad bipartisan support.
The department has no power over what’s taught in schools
Over the years, Donald Trump has vowed to rid America’s schools of such ideas as “wokeness” and critical race theory, and has said that he would close the Education Department in order to return “all education, and education work and needs back to the states.”
In reality, it is already up to states to determine what is taught in classrooms. “It is not the business of the federal government to be involved in curriculum or personnel hiring,” says Kenneth Wong, a professor of education policy at Brown University.
“The Every Student Succeeds Act [ESSA], which was enacted during the tail end of the Obama years, really clearly laid [that] out.” Wong points out that ESSA was shaped, in part, by concerns that its predecessor, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), was teetering into government overreach. When NCLB was reauthorized in the form of ESSA, the law made it clear that it was up to states to determine what was taught in classrooms.
Managing college financial aid and federal student loans
The Education Department is not only responsible for managing the federal student loan portfolio, which amounts to approximately $1.6 trillion in student loan debt, it’s also responsible for the mechanism that gives students access to college financial aid: the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA.
More than 17 million current and aspiring college students fill out the FAFSA each year in order to qualify for student loans, grants and more. For many, it’s the only way they can get help paying for college.
Students who end up taking out loans become part of the department’s massive student loan portfolio, which is managed by the office of Federal Student Aid (FSA). FSA “provides approximately $120.8 billion in grant, work-study, and loan funds each year to help students and their families pay for college or career school,” according to the office’s website. That includes $33 billion in Pell Grants for low-income and middle-income undergraduate students.
FSA also oversees student loan servicers, the outside companies it hires to work directly with borrowers on their loan payments, among other things.
An hours-long outage Wednesday on StudentAid.gov, the federal website for student loans and financial aid, underscored the risks in rapidly gutting the Department of Education, as President Donald Trump aims to dismantle the agency.
Hundreds of users reported FAFSA outages to Downdetector starting midday Wednesday, saying they were having trouble completing the form, which is required for financial aid at colleges nationwide.
The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA), a group of people who handle colleges’ financial aid awards, also received reports of users experiencing technical issues and having trouble completing the FAFSA.
“We’ve been trying to get more clarity on why it’s down,” said Allie Bidwell Arcese, a spokeswoman for NASFAA. The Education Department hadn’t shared any information on the outage, she said. “The maintenance and troubleshooting may be impacted by yesterday’s layoffs.”
The developers and IT support staff who worked on the FAFSA form were hard hit in the Education Department’s layoffs Tuesday, along with staff buyouts and the termination of probationary employees. In all, the Education Department has reduced its staff by half, to roughly 2,000, since Trump took office.
Data collection on colleges and college students
The department maintains and collects data from every college, university, and technical and vocational program that participates in the federal student aid program. This allows tax-payers and families the ability to analyze, compare and track things like student admissions, academic outcomes, graduation rates, need-based aid eligibility, and more.
Tracking student achievement through the Nation’s Report Card
The Education Department also oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), or the “Nation’s Report Card.” It is considered the gold standard of student achievement tests in subjects such as reading, math and science.
The assessment, which is mandated by Congress, actually predates the Department of Education: The federal government began administering the test in 1969, a decade before the department was created.
The Nation’s Report Card has long served as a common yardstick for student achievement, and has been an especially valuable tool through, and since, the pandemic years. In addition to shedding light on how much ground students lost academically, it has also helped the country track chronic absenteeism, poverty levels and educational experiences of students. The data generated by NAEP is then used by educators, policymakers and researchers to work towards improving K-12 education across the country.
“This is a real pressure point now – the dismantling of a department that stewards some of the most important federal resources for some of our most vulnerable children,” said Steven Hernandez, Executive Director of ConnCAN, a statewide education advocacy organization
Can Trump eliminate the Department of Education? No
Trump alone cannot abolish the department. But he can downsize it. Donald Trump’s Department of Education late this afternoon slashed its staff by about 50%, effectively shuttering the agency and gutting its ability to support public schools.
The federal Department of Education was established by Congress, and actually getting rid it would require an act of Congress, which experts have said is unlikely even with Republican majorities in both chambers.
“Nobody wants this, nobody in America wants the destruction of public education,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, one of the several U.S. Senate Democrats that spoke out against Trump’s plan to downsize or dismantle the department in a press conference recently. “This is deeply unpopular.”
The American Federation of Teachers also condemned the move in a statement, and referenced a NPR/PBS News/Marist poll, in which 63% of respondents were “strongly opposed” to getting rid of the department.
Even so, education experts have pointed to other ways the Trump could essentially dismantle it by splitting up its responsibilities among other federal departments, and gutting certain programs.
Overall, it will be mostly be up to Congress and the courts whether to, and how much to, safeguard the department and its major buckets of funding.
What does the department do for funding?
The Department of Education is responsible for several functions: designating federal aid, ensuring compliance with regulations, running the $1.6 trillion student loan program and enforcing civil rights laws.
While the majority of school funding in Connecticut, and across the country, comes from the state and local level, the education department distributes key, substantial funds for education.
Notably, the department is in charge of distributing Title 1, the department’s largest K-12 grant program that provides financial support to school districts for children from low-income families. In 2024, the Connecticut Department of Education received $156,739,760 for Title 1 grants to districts across the state, which use those to fund teaching positions, programs and educational services to support underserved students.
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is another major federal aid program for education, specifically for supporting students with disabilities through special education programming and other services. The Connecticut Department of Education received $170,119,397 for special education in 2024.
“You think about Title One. You think about the IDEA, you think about some of the specific funding for key populations, rural kids, children of immigrant families, some of those key supports that families rely on, if interrupted, if diminished, are only going to exacerbate the lack of work that we have done as a state to figure out how to equitably fund educational opportunity,” Hernandez said. “And unfortunately, because we have so much work to do in Connecticut, these cuts could really impact us even more.”
But getting rid of those major Title I and IDEA funding streams, which were signed into law and are authorized by Congress, would require legislative action. “There are so many protections there that are really wrapped into, or at least part of, how it is that those funds are allocated and why,” Hernandez said.
What’s really at risk?
It’s unclear which employees could be laid off, but their dismissal could mean the end of some programs that are not congressionally mandated.
“When you think of some of the more nuanced levels of funding, so for homeless children, for instance, for small rural efforts to reach children in the quietest areas of our states and country, English language learners, I feel, are really going to be among the most impacted,” Hernandez said.
Many of the programs not mandated by law were for inclusive programming, said CEA President Kate Dias. She expected those to get hit first.
“Anything that has to do with sort of supporting the disenfranchised, the students with disabilities, I think they’re going to look for opportunities to cut,” she said. The Trump administration has already threatened to cut funds for schools with diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
There is speculation that the student loan portfolio could be moved to the Treasury Department, which Project 2025, the sweeping blueprint for a second Trump administration, stated.
To administer state assessments, the U.S. DOE granted Connecticut’s education department a total of $5 million in 2024. Without a department in charge of that, those tests could very well go away, Hernandez said.
Education programs that won’t necessarily be affected:
- Head Start, an early education program that serves low-income children, is administered by the Department of Health and Human Services.
- The National School Lunch Program funded by the federal government through the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
When could Connecticut be affected?
The plan leaves a lot up in the air, and like several of Trump’s efforts so far, foreshadows legal challenges, debate among legislators and uncertainty among those who may be affected the most.
As for funding, federal dollars for this school year have generally already been allocated, but it was the next budget cycle education leaders were worried about. “I mean, for this year, we’re okay, but you know, July is approaching quickly,” said Fran Rabinowitz, executive director of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents.
So far, the Connecticut Department of Education has not had any funding interruptions for any of the federal programs administered, said Education Commissioner Charlene Russell Tucker in a March 5 board meeting.
“So while we’re not sure when the impacts will really be felt, some of this uncertainty creates immediate impacts, because it at times, can cause a pause in the way that funds are dispersed,” Hernandez said.
For Hernandez, the best case scenario was if the plan resulted in a comprehensive audit of what is and is not working at the department, so that functions can improve, he said. However, based on how the Trump administration has handled its crusade through the federal bureaucracy so far, he didn’t necessarily have high hopes.
Hernandez said he hoped Connecticut lawmakers would be ready to step up. “Losing federal resources will be really critical,” Hernandez said. “So it’s really how it is that we in Connecticut will try to make up for some of the gaps that’s really daunting.”
State legislators have expressed support for school funding, but experts have noted it would be difficult to make up for the sheer amount of dollars that may be at risk. In 2022, Connecticut schools got $1.1 billion in federal funding, according to the School and State Finance Project.
“I don’t think you can out budget the federal government,” Dias said. “We’re going to have to grapple with federal cuts when they come. Hopefully they won’t. It’s going to be a shaky time, but we’re going to have to ride the roller coaster together.”
With or without the Department of Education, funding for key programs could shrink through the congressional budget process, which was already a concern for state education advocates.
Connecticut schools currently stand to lose more than $320 million in federal grant funding across a number of programs, according to the Connecticut Education Association.
Like other federal agencies hit by mass firings, efforts to dismantle the Department of Education could also mean layoffs for the about 4,200 employees there, leaving positions vacant and funding streams more prone to disruptions without the oversight they once had.
Trump and Elon Musk’s attempt to shut down the Education Department is part of their plan to destroy American public education.
Private vs Public Schools
Trump has already threatened to strip away federal funding from schools that engage in diversity, equity, and inclusion. He’s also thrown his support behind private vouchers, which use taxpayer dollars to pay for private school tuition and are funneled disproportionately to wealthy families.
Crucially, these private schools are not regulated and have zero academic standards to which they are held accountable—and some wealthy families have even used taxpayer dollars to pay for flat earth curriculums.
Students who attend private schools with publicly funded vouchers are forced to sign away their federal education rights. This means that private schools, using taxpayer dollars, can deny accommodations to students with disabilities and can discriminate against students on the basis of their gender identity and sexual orientation.
Read them and weep:
- “Education Department to Fire 1,300 Workers, Gutting Its Staff,” The New York Times, March 11, 2025
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/11/us/politics/trump-education-department-firings.html
- “Trump is pushing ‘school choice,’ but some Republicans aren’t on board,” NBC News, February 20, 2025
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/education/trump-pushing-school-choice-rural-republicans-rcna192601
- “Flat earthers and universal school vouchers, a match made in Cuckooland (Arizona),” AZ Central, September 13, 2024
