What the U.S. Education Department actually does

Separating fact from fiction, tweets from journalism.

Shutting down the U.S. Department of Education was a popular Republican talking point during the 2024 election. It remains on the Trump Administration agenda but for reasons unrelated to what the department actually does.

Photo by Austin Pacheco on Unsplash

Let’s start with what the department does NOT do:

• It does not set the curriculum for public schools. States and local school districts decide what children will learn in their classrooms, and choose and buy their textbooks. This includes mandating the so-called “Common Core,” which is decided by the states not the federal government.

• It does not decide who is qualified to teach in public schools and how much they should be paid. Most hiring and firing decisions happen at the school and district level, but in some states the state government sets school budgets and affects hiring decisions.

• It does not regulate private schools or private and public universities. It does not set university tuition or tell colleges who to hire and how much to pay them. It doesn’t tell colleges what to teach, how to teach or who to teach.

• It does not decide whether students in your state can get vouchers to pay for them to attend private school.

• It doesn’t regulate or enable charter schools.

Here’s what the Department of Education DOES do:

• Oversees federal student loans and monitors the program that helps students qualify for college financial aid.

• Sends billions of taxpayer dollars to help K-12 schools that educate low-income students, which are called Title 1 schools. Supports early learning programs for low-income families. Sends dollars to the states for their school lunch programs.

• Makes sure students with disabilities get the services and education they are promised under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The department also distributes federal dollars to the states to support special education programs.

• Protects students from racial discrimination and sex discrimination, through civil rights laws, other regulations and the work of the department’s Office for Civil Rights.

• Holds schools accountable for educating all students through testing, assessment and regulations.

• Works to prevent fraud in higher education, including colleges charging high fees for useless training and degrees.

So If you hate what your children are learning in your public school or you think their teachers are not qualified, you should run for your local school board. Killing the U.S. Department of Education would have zero impact on those issues or any of the things above the department does not control.

But don’t feel bad if you didn’t know all this. The woman Donald Trump nominated to lead the department is ignorant as well. During her Senate confirmation hearing, Linda McMahon, who is best known leading World Wrestling Entertainment, said she wanted to return curriculum control to the states. But the states already control curriculum.

McMahon acknowledged that her job would be to dismantle the department. But since Congress established the Department of Education in 1979, it would take an act of Congress to shut it down. Congress also sets the budget for education programs; the department just distributes the money

Trump’s battle plans

The Department of Education is the smallest cabinet-level agency with just over 4,000 employees (before recent Trump Administration cuts). Earlier this month, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency cut $900 million from the budget of the department program that tracks student academic progress. Remember No Child Left Behind, the government program that forced the states to track how well students were doing in different schools. People have very mixed feelings about student testing but the program started in 2002 during the George W. Bush administration was relatively popular among Republicans.

The DOGE cuts hit the Education Department’s Institute of Education Sciences and halted various research projects, including long-term studies of student achievement and research on which supports for students with disabilities are most effective. Education advocates called the cuts counterproductive because they will hurt the one department program helping close student achievement gaps. DOGE communication about the cuts said some of them were made to programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion. Sounds like another government employee didn’t do their homework.

Cutting or changing individual education programs like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act would require additional action from Congress to stop making sure students with disabilities are well served. And states also have their own rules and regulations about special education.

McMahon said if the Education Department goes away, other federal agencies could take over some of its functions. Would this be a more or less efficient way to manage student loans or student civil rights? I doubt it since people who are unfamiliar with programs are not likely to be more efficient at running them, and efficiency is not Trump’s main purpose in shutting down the department.

Executive Order 14190 on Jan. 29 called for ending “radical indoctrination in K-12 schooling,” which could sound like a good idea to those who think the Department of Education controls local public school curriculum. But it doesn’t.

Executive Order 14191 on Jan. 29 called for “expanding educational freedom and opportunity for families,” which calls for more school choice for families. It would make federal dollars sent to the states for public education available for programs like school vouchers. But it would still be up to the states to decide whether to have voucher programs. According to the Department of Education, 20 states allow parents to take some of their education dollars and spend them at private schools.

McMahon said at her confirmation hearing that she thinks the department can be shut down without ending government funding for special education, for example. "It is not the president's goal to defund the programs. It was only to have it operate more efficiently,” she said.

She emphasized that IDEA funding would not be targeted for cuts but that it might be more efficient to run that programa out of the Department of Health and Human Services, which got the attention of at least one lawmaker, Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-New Hampshire, who said, "I just want to be clear, you're going to put special education into the hands of Robert F. Kennedy Jr."

Go deeper: Keep reading

The Brookings Institution did a deep dive on the Department of Education:

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/faqs-the-us-department-of-education-and-the-trump-administration/

NPR is keeping track of all the Trump Administration nominations:

https://www.npr.org/2024/11/12/g-s1-33773/trump-cabinet-advisers-administration

The Federal Register has posted details about all the Trump executive orders:

https://www.federalregister.gov/presidential-documents/executive-orders/donald-trump/2025

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