On March 20th, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order entitled, “Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities.”
The action essentially aims to dismantle the Department of Education, or ED, claiming that “closing the Department of Education would provide children and their families the opportunity to escape a system that is failing them.”
The White House argues that abolishing the ED will grant more power to states, as they already control many functions of public education. Some members of the conservative party seek to use block grants, which would be provided to states to use at their discretion.
The ED’s stated purpose is, “to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access for students of all ages.”
The department, which was created in 1980, “establishes policy for, administers, and coordinates most federal assistance to education,” according to its website.
Notably, the department currently oversees Pell Grants, a form of federal financial aid, as well as federal student loans. The ED also controls Title I, which provides funds to support low-income students, and commands money for children with disabilities through the Individuals with Disabilities Act.
While it requires an act of Congress to officially abolish a federal agency, the executive order instructed the Secretary of Education 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.”
The order also demands the department’s compliance with federal law and administrative policy, instructing, “that any program or activity receiving Federal assistance terminate illegal discrimination obscured under the label ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ or similar terms and programs promoting gender ideology.”
About half of the department’s staff have already experienced layoffs, and the administration has expressed the desire to relocate the ED’s Office for Civil Rights to another department. $900 million in cuts have already been made to the department’s Institute of Education Sciences. The agency, which does research in order to improve higher education, has also lost many of its contracts.
The Trump administration aims to close the ED, but maintain core functions such as Title I funding, Pell grants and disability funding. They seek to relocate control of student loan debt to a different entity that is “equipped to serve America’s students.”
According to the National Education Association, stripping the Department of Education’s resources and values would be most detrimental to students of low-income backgrounds who are heavily dependent on educational support and services.
“Gutting the department,” National Education Association President Becky Pringle said, “would mean less resources for our most vulnerable students, larger class sizes, fewer special education services for students with disabilities, and less civil rights protections.”
The long-term impacts of the March executive order remain unknown, but it is sure to impact education in the United States, placing the majority of educational power squarely in states’ hands.
