Eliminating the Department of Education has been a Republican dream since President Ronald Reagan expressed the same wish nearly a half-century ago, shortly after it was established under President Jimmy Carter.
But even Reagan, who labeled the department a “bureaucratic boondoggle,” had to back down when he realized there was not enough support in Congress for “abolishing” the department, even among Republicans. President-elect Donald Trump, who has pledged repeatedly to shut the department down, is likely to learn the same lesson.
Though most Americans have little idea what the Department of Education does, there are many reasons it has withstood decades of GOP attacks.
The most obvious reason is that a lot of Republican lawmakers support the key programs that the department administers. One of the biggest, the $18 billion Title I program, targets funds at schools with large low-income enrollments. A large portion of those funds go to schools in red states, especially in rural areas.
Another big outlay is the approximately $14 billion in grants to states for special education programs that serve 7.5 million students. Special education has long been an issue with bipartisan support. Obviously, children with disabilities live in pro-Trump areas too, and their parents are often well-organized and effective at advocating for their rights. Parents not only want to see those programs adequately funded, but they also count on the department to protect the rights of their children.
Programs related to college affordability also enjoy substantial GOP support. Although there are disagreements about how generous the benefits should be, cutting the popular $24 billion Pell Grant program could generate fierce bipartisan resistance. Transferring the department’s oversight of $2 trillion in student loans to private banks that are likely to raise interest rates would also be regarded as highly problematic.
No one likes to defend a government bureaucracy, but there is little expectation — even among ardent proponents — that closing the Education Department would save any public dollars. The authors of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 have not called for the department’s principal programs to be abolished. Instead, as Project 2025 specifies in great detail, they would be transferred to other departments, like Treasury, Labor, Justice and Health and Human Services. The document does not adequately explain how such a reorganization would save taxpayers money.
This raises the question: If closing the department would not yield any savings — or none significant enough to warrant the upheaval, resistance and chaos that moving these programs elsewhere in the federal bureaucracy might create — why do it?
The ideologues behind the proposal are likely to propose shuttering the department solely so that Trump can keep his promise. However, passing the necessary legislation is unlikely in a Senate where a 60-vote majority would be required, or in the House, where just a handful of GOP votes would block such a move.
Ironically, the biggest reason the department is likely to remain open is that it could be useful to Trump and GOP lawmakers in implementing their far-reaching education agenda, which is made up largely of items drawn from the “culture wars” embroiling school districts and college campuses. These include “defunding” schools they claim teach critical race theory, barring transgender girls from playing girls’ sports, and abolishing diversity, equity and inclusion programs on college campuses. All these reforms would be harder to carry out in the absence of a centralized education authority.
The department’s Office of Civil Rights will be especially important to implementing them. The office is responsible for investigating discrimination complaints in both K-12 and higher education institutions, including those based on race, sex and disability. But those laws are open to interpretation and can be used by both Democrats and Republicans to advance often conflicting agendas.
Most importantly, the office wields a big stick: It can threaten schools or colleges with losing federal funds for both research and student aid.
One unknown factor is Linda McMahon, the cofounder with her husband of World Wrestling Entertainment and Trump’s nominee to head the department. McMahon has little background in education aside from one controversy-free year on the Connecticut State Board of Education. She is arguably one of the least ideologically-driven of Trump’s Cabinet picks. She is, however, a founder and chair of the board of the influential America First Policy Institute, which has published a detailed education policy agenda that, notably, does not call for the dismantling of the department.
Lost in these debates is that parents generally support the public schools their children attend, despite those schools’ flaws and challenges. It is telling that in November two red states — Nebraska and Kentucky — voted down voucher initiatives, as has happened before in states like Arizona.
So, if McMahon and Trump try to close the Department of Education, they may be surprised to find that much of the resistance will come from Republicans in local communities who continue to support many of its programs.
That could put McMahon in the middle of a fight reminiscent of the rumbles she no doubt enjoyed watching in the wrestling ring, but would likely want to avoid even in the increasingly raucous halls of Washington.
Pedro Noguera is dean of the USC Rossier School of Education and host of Sparking Equity, a podcast focused on strategies to help all students succeed. Louis Freedberg, formerly executive director of EdSource, is the podcast’s executive producer.
