The Trump administration is poised to issue executive orders that would dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, defunding many of its programs and shifting functions to other agencies. While outright abolishing the department would require an act of Congress, the administration is expected to try to get as close as possible through executive actions—even when those actions may be illegal. There are many unknowns in terms of how this might play out in the executive branch and through legal challenges in the courts, but all of the likely scenarios create harmful risks for students and families.
Millions of Americans rely on federal support from the Department of Education to open doors along their educational journeys—from the nearly 1 million infants, toddlers, and preschoolers with disabilities or developmental delays who have access to early intervention and special education services through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA); to the 26 million pre-K–12 students supported by federal Title I funding; to the 43 million people with federal student loans.
Here are eight of the many ways that students and families stand to lose if the Trump administration succeeds in gutting the Department of Education.
K–12 Education
1. Students with disabilities could lose critical resources and protections.
One of the Department of Education’s core responsibilities is to administer programs created by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, under which 7.5 million disabled students—roughly, 15 percent of the student population—have received individualized education services, including pre-employment transition services, special education support services, and much more. While the Trump administration cannot scrap IDEA or its funding without Congressional approval, it could attempt to move the administration of IDEA over to another government agency.
This kind of change would have a drastic and immediate impact on students with disabilities. There is no other federal agency with the expertise needed to oversee special education and ensure the rights of students to a free and appropriate public education. Disabled students, half of whom have learning or speech and language disabilities, rely every day on protections in federal law to get services that keep them safe and able to advance educationally.
Local school districts across the country rely on federal funds daily to support disabled students, pay special education teachers and therapists, and buy the materials and equipment that students need. In addition to providing funding for these programs, the Department of Education stands as a bulwark against violations of students’ civil rights ensuring that students served under the IDEA and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act receive the educational supports and services they require. A new administering agency would likely lack a deep understanding of these laws and enforcement power. Transitioning these responsibilities out of the Department of Education could very well lead to states choosing restrictive settings and approaches that flout long-standing legal requirements of integrating students with disabilities into classrooms and experiences with their nondisabled peers. Students and families may find themselves without the supports and protections to which they are legally entitled, putting additional strain on an already underfunded and understaffed program and resulting in real impacts on educational attainment and achievement for an entire class of students.
2. Low-income students could see their schools lose teachers and counselors, cut family engagement and mental health programs, and be unable to afford new books and other classroom and curricular materials.
The largest K–12 program run through the U.S. Department of Education is Title I, which provides funding to schools that enroll high percentages of low-income students. Nearly two-thirds of all public schools receive Title I funding. These federal funds ensure that schools have extra supports—more teachers, money for supplies, access to better curriculum, behavioral and mental health programs, and more—to help low-income children succeed and help make up for the gaps between rich and poor school districts that exist in state and local funding systems, which typically disadvantage poorer areas with lower property tax revenue. Like IDEA, Title I is part of federal law, and so the Trump administration cannot cancel or defund it without an act of Congress. However, the executive orders on education issued so far by Trump have already shown an intention to misuse existing K–12 funding for unauthorized purposes, despite the fact that to do so is flagrantly illegal. The Trump administration may attempt to take the route outlined by Project 2025, which is to to phase out Title I over ten years by first converting it into a “no-strings-attached” block grant, in which funding is given to states (rather than to local education agencies, such as school districts and charter schools, as it is now) without accountability for making sure that it is being spent in ways that help low-income students. States are projected to lose money under this administration, and they could choose to use these limited funds simply to reduce their own education investments, cutting the important services and supports that Title I currently funds.
3. Students and their families could lose federal protections against civil rights violations.
The Department of Education plays a key role in enforcing civil rights laws that protect students from discrimination based on race or national origin, immigration status, sex, disability, and religion through the work of its Office for Civil Rights (OCR). OCR investigates individual complaints, such as when a child is denied access to special education services outlined in their Individualized Education Plan, or experiences harassment in school based on their gender identity and sexual orientation, as well as complaints seeking to protect groups of students, such as when Black students are receiving harsher discipline than white students for the same offenses. As such, OCR has historically served as an important tool of accountability and enforcement for both individual families and communities.
The Trump administration is widely expected to turn civil rights enforcement on its head in ways that harm historically marginalized communities—as we have already seen in executive orders targeting transgender students under the guise of upholding women’s rights. The administration may also try to cut funding for OCR or, as proposed in Project 2025, move it to the U.S. Department of Justice, where students and families would have to take all complaints through the courts—a more complicated process that is expensive and harder for families to access—rather than having the option of the administrative enforcement system currently in place. These changes would slow down the process and decrease the likelihood of timely remedies for students whose rights have been violated. A report by the University of Maryland’s School of Law stated “A general weakness of DOJ’s Americans with Disabilities Act implementation and enforcement program is that it appears unresponsive to the concerns and priorities of its stakeholders, including individuals with disabilities, State and local government agencies, disability professionals, and disability experts.” In addition, the new U.S. attorney general has already issued a memorandum to refocus priorities at the Department of Justice, including turning the attention of the civil rights division to rooting out DEI and EIA policies in private companies, further indicating that education-related civil rights claims will receive insufficient attention if housed at Justice. With all civil rights complaints going through the Department of Justice, the likelihood of any timely remedy for the students experiencing harm will be close to zero.
4. Students and families could lose access to wraparound supports, enrichment programs, innovative teaching models, and public school choice options.
In addition to some of the large, formula-funded programs, such as those in IDEA and Title I, where the funding criteria are set in law, the U.S. Department of Education also operates dozens of discretionary grant programs, through which funding is awarded based on a competitive process with more leeway for the department to exercise judgment. Public schools across the country depend on these grants to fund a host of different educational supports, including investments in early literacy, academic acceleration, enrichment programs, and teacher development. In addition, federal grants support investments to upgrade school technology, to start community schools that offer health services and more, and to run before- and after-school programs that benefit students and working families. They also expand school choice by funding the growth and creation of magnet schools and charter schools.
Higher Education
5. Upheaval in student loan management will push borrowers into default.
Disrupting student loan infrastructure could barrel the nation toward higher rates of student loan default. By dollars and cents, student loan debt is the federal government’s largest financial asset. The Department of Education manages that $1.6 trillion asset: it not only disburses student loans, but also provides vital information to borrowers, investigates fraud and abuse in federal student aid programs, and manages servicers. A hand-off of the oversight of these complex and far-reaching responsibilities runs the risk of creating serious gaps in oversight and hiccups in the administration of these vital programs. This past year’s experience with the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) showed that, even with the best of intentions, large infrastructure changes under a rushed timeline run the risk of grave problems. The federal student loan system is arguably even larger and more complex than the FAFSA and is depended upon by even more Americans every year.
Borrowers are now repaying their loans without the protections provided by the Biden administration that eased the resumption to monthly payments post-pandemic. Just as the need for assistance is rising, dismantling the Department of Education would perilously reduce its capacity to help. To make matters worse, Republican officials’ lawsuits against the SAVE Plan have already sowed widespread confusion and may lead to reduced benefits for borrowers. Elevated monthly payments and a debilitated department are two ingredients for a worse student debt crisis than ever, sending borrowers into default with little hope of recourse.
6. Students and colleges would suffer from weakened protections and increased chaos and confusion.
Proponents of dismantling the Department of Education argue that other agencies can take its place in carrying out its work. This view ignores the deep expertise and critical experience that department officials bring to a wide range of intersecting diverse areas affecting college students and universities.
The Department of Education is best known by millions of students for its facilitation of the Pell Grant and federal student loan programs, but that is only one part of its services to students. The department also plays an indispensable role in:
- protecting students and taxpayers from investing in low-quality or predatory programs;
- managing student loan repayment plans;
- administering grants for science and research;
- running programs for veterans, student-parents, and campus employment;
- operating vital data collection programs and helping families identify high-value programs that fit their needs;
- defending students from discrimination;
- overseeing student loan servicing;
- supervising college accreditation;
- carrying out programs for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs);
- providing career and technical education opportunities to working adults; and
- ensuring that eligible public servants can access loan forgiveness.
While the Department of Education’s functions could be moved to another part of the federal government, moving these vital roles to other agencies that do not have the expertise or experience of the department would create numerous challenges and would put students, student borrowers, schools, and taxpayers at risk. It will be difficult for stakeholders to know if programs are being transferred properly, though that seems to be a feature of the plan rather than a bug. The result will inevitably be that students, families, and institutions knock on the door asking for help and find no one’s home. It is also an open invitation for private actors to take advantage of the education system for personal profit at a time of reduced oversight.
7. Eliminating the federal role in higher education risks widening college access gaps and leaving low-income students without a pathway to college.
As with K–12, the Department of Education scarcely touches higher education curriculum. That is by design: in the United States, teaching and learning are the purview of states and local communities, and private organizations accredit universities, not the federal government.
The larger impact of gutting the Department of Education would be on who is in the classroom. In higher education, the department’s largest function is grantmaking and lending in service of college access and affordability. The Pell Grant helps ensure that students around the country can access higher education, regardless of their socioeconomic background. Calls to “return education to the states” would replace the federal system with one where there is far greater state-by-state variation in how the program is designed and administered. Changes to programs such as the Pell Grant could have seismic reverberations on college access for low-income families.
There are proposals to increase state investments in higher education, but Congress has not yet passed them. Federal student aid is intertwined completely into the fabric of higher education, a process that started eight decades ago with the original G.I. Bill. If the new administration wants the federal government out of the student aid business, it would require a sophisticated plan spread over multiple years, not an abrupt overhaul that could jeopardize crucial affordable college access for students and families. Reform requires the care and precision of a scalpel, not the brute force of a hammer.
8. Students and colleges would have fewer safeguards from ideological crusades.
Reports of terminated research contracts and employees placed on administrative leave for attending a diversity training may only be the beginning of large-scale cuts to the Department of Education’s work force, much like how the administration decimated the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The department is already the smallest cabinet-level department, even before layoffs. The long-term plan seems to be gutting the department so badly that Congress is faced with the choice of something easy yet deeply unpopular (abolish the department) or something popular yet hard (return it to form).
In the meantime, there will be fewer voices in the department to protest the weaponization of its functions for political ends. While the administration suggests that it wants a smaller federal role in higher education, it has also stated intentions for the federal government to get more involved in academic topics, such as whether colleges teach topics such as critical race theory. For the department to withhold federal student aid funds from colleges that don’t comply with its ideological positions would be a brazen departure from precedent, but is in lockstep with the administration’s executive orders to date.
The federal student aid spigot keeps students enrolled, and their enrollment keeps colleges alive. It is bad enough if the administration sees federal aid as useless; it’s even worse if they see it as a useful means to ideological ends.
The Risk for the Nation
Human history has been called “a race between education and catastrophe.” Dismantling the Department of Education would only steer the country further toward catastrophe.
If the programs and protections that the Department of Education provides are stripped from public schools and higher education, students and their families will suffer and America will fall farther behind other nations in educational outcomes and investments in tomorrow’s leaders. Dismantling the department would not only create chaos in the education system but also exacerbate existing inequities, leaving the most vulnerable students at a disadvantage. Federal oversight plays a vital role in ensuring that all students—regardless of their background—have access to educational opportunity. Eliminating the department would strip away essential funding, weaken civil rights protections, and leave students with disabilities and low-income families without necessary support. Instead of eroding these protections, policymakers should focus on strengthening the Department of Education’s ability to support students, families, schools, and colleges nationwide. Protecting and expanding its role is essential to ensuring that education remains a pathway to opportunity for all Americans.
Tags: educational equity, U.S. Department of Education, education programs
How Gutting the U.S. Department of Education Would Hurt Students and Their Families
Jump to K-12 education; higher education; overall risk for the nation.
The Trump administration is poised to issue executive orders that would dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, defunding many of its programs and shifting functions to other agencies. While outright abolishing the department would require an act of Congress, the administration is expected to try to get as close as possible through executive actions—even when those actions may be illegal. There are many unknowns in terms of how this might play out in the executive branch and through legal challenges in the courts, but all of the likely scenarios create harmful risks for students and families.
Millions of Americans rely on federal support from the Department of Education to open doors along their educational journeys—from the nearly 1 million infants, toddlers, and preschoolers with disabilities or developmental delays who have access to early intervention and special education services through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA); to the 26 million pre-K–12 students supported by federal Title I funding; to the 43 million people with federal student loans.
Here are eight of the many ways that students and families stand to lose if the Trump administration succeeds in gutting the Department of Education.
K–12 Education
1. Students with disabilities could lose critical resources and protections.
One of the Department of Education’s core responsibilities is to administer programs created by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, under which 7.5 million disabled students—roughly, 15 percent of the student population—have received individualized education services, including pre-employment transition services, special education support services, and much more. While the Trump administration cannot scrap IDEA or its funding without Congressional approval, it could attempt to move the administration of IDEA over to another government agency.
This kind of change would have a drastic and immediate impact on students with disabilities. There is no other federal agency with the expertise needed to oversee special education and ensure the rights of students to a free and appropriate public education. Disabled students, half of whom have learning or speech and language disabilities, rely every day on protections in federal law to get services that keep them safe and able to advance educationally.
Local school districts across the country rely on federal funds daily to support disabled students, pay special education teachers and therapists, and buy the materials and equipment that students need. In addition to providing funding for these programs, the Department of Education stands as a bulwark against violations of students’ civil rights ensuring that students served under the IDEA and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act receive the educational supports and services they require. A new administering agency would likely lack a deep understanding of these laws and enforcement power. Transitioning these responsibilities out of the Department of Education could very well lead to states choosing restrictive settings and approaches that flout long-standing legal requirements of integrating students with disabilities into classrooms and experiences with their nondisabled peers. Students and families may find themselves without the supports and protections to which they are legally entitled, putting additional strain on an already underfunded and understaffed program and resulting in real impacts on educational attainment and achievement for an entire class of students.
2. Low-income students could see their schools lose teachers and counselors, cut family engagement and mental health programs, and be unable to afford new books and other classroom and curricular materials.
The largest K–12 program run through the U.S. Department of Education is Title I, which provides funding to schools that enroll high percentages of low-income students. Nearly two-thirds of all public schools receive Title I funding. These federal funds ensure that schools have extra supports—more teachers, money for supplies, access to better curriculum, behavioral and mental health programs, and more—to help low-income children succeed and help make up for the gaps between rich and poor school districts that exist in state and local funding systems, which typically disadvantage poorer areas with lower property tax revenue. Like IDEA, Title I is part of federal law, and so the Trump administration cannot cancel or defund it without an act of Congress. However, the executive orders on education issued so far by Trump have already shown an intention to misuse existing K–12 funding for unauthorized purposes, despite the fact that to do so is flagrantly illegal. The Trump administration may attempt to take the route outlined by Project 2025, which is to to phase out Title I over ten years by first converting it into a “no-strings-attached” block grant, in which funding is given to states (rather than to local education agencies, such as school districts and charter schools, as it is now) without accountability for making sure that it is being spent in ways that help low-income students. States are projected to lose money under this administration, and they could choose to use these limited funds simply to reduce their own education investments, cutting the important services and supports that Title I currently funds.
3. Students and their families could lose federal protections against civil rights violations.
The Department of Education plays a key role in enforcing civil rights laws that protect students from discrimination based on race or national origin, immigration status, sex, disability, and religion through the work of its Office for Civil Rights (OCR). OCR investigates individual complaints, such as when a child is denied access to special education services outlined in their Individualized Education Plan, or experiences harassment in school based on their gender identity and sexual orientation, as well as complaints seeking to protect groups of students, such as when Black students are receiving harsher discipline than white students for the same offenses. As such, OCR has historically served as an important tool of accountability and enforcement for both individual families and communities.
The Trump administration is widely expected to turn civil rights enforcement on its head in ways that harm historically marginalized communities—as we have already seen in executive orders targeting transgender students under the guise of upholding women’s rights. The administration may also try to cut funding for OCR or, as proposed in Project 2025, move it to the U.S. Department of Justice, where students and families would have to take all complaints through the courts—a more complicated process that is expensive and harder for families to access—rather than having the option of the administrative enforcement system currently in place. These changes would slow down the process and decrease the likelihood of timely remedies for students whose rights have been violated. A report by the University of Maryland’s School of Law stated “A general weakness of DOJ’s Americans with Disabilities Act implementation and enforcement program is that it appears unresponsive to the concerns and priorities of its stakeholders, including individuals with disabilities, State and local government agencies, disability professionals, and disability experts.” In addition, the new U.S. attorney general has already issued a memorandum to refocus priorities at the Department of Justice, including turning the attention of the civil rights division to rooting out DEI and EIA policies in private companies, further indicating that education-related civil rights claims will receive insufficient attention if housed at Justice. With all civil rights complaints going through the Department of Justice, the likelihood of any timely remedy for the students experiencing harm will be close to zero.
4. Students and families could lose access to wraparound supports, enrichment programs, innovative teaching models, and public school choice options.
In addition to some of the large, formula-funded programs, such as those in IDEA and Title I, where the funding criteria are set in law, the U.S. Department of Education also operates dozens of discretionary grant programs, through which funding is awarded based on a competitive process with more leeway for the department to exercise judgment. Public schools across the country depend on these grants to fund a host of different educational supports, including investments in early literacy, academic acceleration, enrichment programs, and teacher development. In addition, federal grants support investments to upgrade school technology, to start community schools that offer health services and more, and to run before- and after-school programs that benefit students and working families. They also expand school choice by funding the growth and creation of magnet schools and charter schools.
Higher Education
5. Upheaval in student loan management will push borrowers into default.
Disrupting student loan infrastructure could barrel the nation toward higher rates of student loan default. By dollars and cents, student loan debt is the federal government’s largest financial asset. The Department of Education manages that $1.6 trillion asset: it not only disburses student loans, but also provides vital information to borrowers, investigates fraud and abuse in federal student aid programs, and manages servicers. A hand-off of the oversight of these complex and far-reaching responsibilities runs the risk of creating serious gaps in oversight and hiccups in the administration of these vital programs. This past year’s experience with the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) showed that, even with the best of intentions, large infrastructure changes under a rushed timeline run the risk of grave problems. The federal student loan system is arguably even larger and more complex than the FAFSA and is depended upon by even more Americans every year.
Borrowers are now repaying their loans without the protections provided by the Biden administration that eased the resumption to monthly payments post-pandemic. Just as the need for assistance is rising, dismantling the Department of Education would perilously reduce its capacity to help. To make matters worse, Republican officials’ lawsuits against the SAVE Plan have already sowed widespread confusion and may lead to reduced benefits for borrowers. Elevated monthly payments and a debilitated department are two ingredients for a worse student debt crisis than ever, sending borrowers into default with little hope of recourse.
6. Students and colleges would suffer from weakened protections and increased chaos and confusion.
Proponents of dismantling the Department of Education argue that other agencies can take its place in carrying out its work. This view ignores the deep expertise and critical experience that department officials bring to a wide range of intersecting diverse areas affecting college students and universities.
The Department of Education is best known by millions of students for its facilitation of the Pell Grant and federal student loan programs, but that is only one part of its services to students. The department also plays an indispensable role in:
While the Department of Education’s functions could be moved to another part of the federal government, moving these vital roles to other agencies that do not have the expertise or experience of the department would create numerous challenges and would put students, student borrowers, schools, and taxpayers at risk. It will be difficult for stakeholders to know if programs are being transferred properly, though that seems to be a feature of the plan rather than a bug. The result will inevitably be that students, families, and institutions knock on the door asking for help and find no one’s home. It is also an open invitation for private actors to take advantage of the education system for personal profit at a time of reduced oversight.
7. Eliminating the federal role in higher education risks widening college access gaps and leaving low-income students without a pathway to college.
As with K–12, the Department of Education scarcely touches higher education curriculum. That is by design: in the United States, teaching and learning are the purview of states and local communities, and private organizations accredit universities, not the federal government.
The larger impact of gutting the Department of Education would be on who is in the classroom. In higher education, the department’s largest function is grantmaking and lending in service of college access and affordability. The Pell Grant helps ensure that students around the country can access higher education, regardless of their socioeconomic background. Calls to “return education to the states” would replace the federal system with one where there is far greater state-by-state variation in how the program is designed and administered. Changes to programs such as the Pell Grant could have seismic reverberations on college access for low-income families.
There are proposals to increase state investments in higher education, but Congress has not yet passed them. Federal student aid is intertwined completely into the fabric of higher education, a process that started eight decades ago with the original G.I. Bill. If the new administration wants the federal government out of the student aid business, it would require a sophisticated plan spread over multiple years, not an abrupt overhaul that could jeopardize crucial affordable college access for students and families. Reform requires the care and precision of a scalpel, not the brute force of a hammer.
8. Students and colleges would have fewer safeguards from ideological crusades.
Reports of terminated research contracts and employees placed on administrative leave for attending a diversity training may only be the beginning of large-scale cuts to the Department of Education’s work force, much like how the administration decimated the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The department is already the smallest cabinet-level department, even before layoffs. The long-term plan seems to be gutting the department so badly that Congress is faced with the choice of something easy yet deeply unpopular (abolish the department) or something popular yet hard (return it to form).
In the meantime, there will be fewer voices in the department to protest the weaponization of its functions for political ends. While the administration suggests that it wants a smaller federal role in higher education, it has also stated intentions for the federal government to get more involved in academic topics, such as whether colleges teach topics such as critical race theory. For the department to withhold federal student aid funds from colleges that don’t comply with its ideological positions would be a brazen departure from precedent, but is in lockstep with the administration’s executive orders to date.
The federal student aid spigot keeps students enrolled, and their enrollment keeps colleges alive. It is bad enough if the administration sees federal aid as useless; it’s even worse if they see it as a useful means to ideological ends.
The Risk for the Nation
Human history has been called “a race between education and catastrophe.” Dismantling the Department of Education would only steer the country further toward catastrophe.
If the programs and protections that the Department of Education provides are stripped from public schools and higher education, students and their families will suffer and America will fall farther behind other nations in educational outcomes and investments in tomorrow’s leaders. Dismantling the department would not only create chaos in the education system but also exacerbate existing inequities, leaving the most vulnerable students at a disadvantage. Federal oversight plays a vital role in ensuring that all students—regardless of their background—have access to educational opportunity. Eliminating the department would strip away essential funding, weaken civil rights protections, and leave students with disabilities and low-income families without necessary support. Instead of eroding these protections, policymakers should focus on strengthening the Department of Education’s ability to support students, families, schools, and colleges nationwide. Protecting and expanding its role is essential to ensuring that education remains a pathway to opportunity for all Americans.
Tags: educational equity, U.S. Department of Education, education programs