Defending the Department of Education

Eliminating the Department of Education is a bad idea.

Main Headline: Donald Trump wants to layoff teachers, harm special education, and take food away from hungry children, in order to provide tax cuts to billionaires.

Donald Trump is aggressively moving to fulfill his long-promised destruction of the Department of Education. Legally, only Congress can abolish a federal agency, but Trump and Musk haven't let laws slow them down yet.

Yesterday, Trump issued a controversial (and likely illegal) executive order demanding the dismantling of the Department of Education. His administration plans to redistribute some responsibilities to other agencies and slash half of the department’s workforce.

Destroying the Department of Education isn't just a terrible idea—it's reckless. It would plunge public education into chaos. Politically, it's unpopular: 61% of voters oppose eliminating the Department by executive order.

Trump claims cutting the Department will boost education by reducing bureaucracy and giving power back to states. This is wrong.

States already control curriculum and standards. Eliminating the Department would only reduce critical funding for local school districts—hurting teachers, students, and families nationwide.

This destructive act could seriously backfire politically for Trump. Let's make sure everyone understands what's at stake.

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What You Need To Know

• The Department of Education administers approximately $79 billion annually, including critical Pell Grants supporting 7 million low-income college students.

• Eliminating the Department endangers protections for 7.5 million students with disabilities who rely on federally mandated special education services.

• Title I provides $18 billion annually to high-poverty schools, funding smaller classes, essential tutoring, and reading specialists. Urban districts like Chicago and Columbus depend on these funds for 20-25% of their budgets.

• Civil rights protections against discrimination (race, gender, ability) depend heavily on enforcement by the Department, which would lose its primary enforcement tools.

• Funds and responsibilities would not transfer smoothly to other agencies, disrupting education for millions of vulnerable students.

How To Talk About This:

Focus on the specific impacts that closing the Department of Education will have:

• Increased classroom sizes.

• Massive teacher layoffs.

• More schools falling into disrepair.

• Devastating cuts to special education.

• Children losing access to school lunch programs.

None of this improves American education. Trump's actions directly advance Project 2025's harmful goal of privatizing public schools—taking taxpayer dollars away from public education and funneling them into vouchers. This scheme benefits only wealthy families, harming the 90% of students depending on our public schools.

The ultimate goal: redirecting savings from education cuts straight into tax breaks for billionaires.

Sources:

- [Congressional Research Service report on Department of Education functions](https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R46807.pdf)

- [National Center for Education Statistics data on graduation rates](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/coi/high-school-graduation-rates)

- [U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights data](https://www2.ed.gov/about/reports/annual/ocr/report-to-president-and-secretary-of-education-2021.pdf)

- Title I impact: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-education-department-executive-order-student-loan/

- Civil rights protections: https://19thnews.org/2025/03/trump-executive-order-department-of-education/

- Voter opposition: https://www.nea.org/nea-today/all-news-articles/how-dismantling-department-education-would-harm-students

The Council of the Great City Schools estimates large urban districts would lose hundreds of millions in federal funding: [https://www.cgcs.org/domain/35](https://www.cgcs.org/domain/35)

Center for American Progress analysis on impacts of Department elimination: [https://www.americanprogress.org/article/trumps-plan-to-eliminate-the-department-of-education-is-just-what-corporate-school-reformers-always-wanted/](https://www.americanprogress.org/article/trumps-plan-to-eliminate-the-department-of-education-is-just-what-corporate-school-reformers-always-wanted/)

Education Trust data on Title I importance for equity: [https://edtrust.org/resource/the-education-trust-federal-funding-equity/](https://edtrust.org/resource/the-education-trust-federal-funding-equity/)