Closing time at the Department of Education

Just three months into his second administration, President Donald Trump looks set to do something every Republican president since Ronald Reagan has pushed for: abolish the Department of Education.

On Tuesday evening, the federal Office of Personnel Management shut down the department’s Washington headquarters for Wednesday, citing undefined safety reasons. Education Secretary Linda McMahon then announced a 50% reduction in force, placing roughly 1,300 employees on administrative leave beginning March 21, including roughly 600 federal workers who accepted a buyout. The department is also canceling its leases for regional offices in Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, New York, and San Francisco.

McMahon called it part of the department’s final mission.

“President Trump’s goal is not to take away education,” McMahon told Fox News on Tuesday. “It’s to take the bureaucracy out of education.

Abolishing the department outright—or reducing it to a shell—would test the boundaries of presidential power and the executive branch’s relationship with Congress. More immediately, it poses questions about whether and how the department’s many federal aid programs would continue to operate.

Congress first created the Department of Education in 1979, three years after President Jimmy Carter campaigned on adding an education seat to his cabinet. Even then, Republicans opposed the plan, arguing that the Constitution does not mention education as a federal role.

Forty-five years later, current GOP lawmakers say the same.

“I'm very intrigued with what President Trump is talking about in dismantling the federal Department of Education,” Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind., said during McMahon’s confirmation hearing. “I’ve served in the state house, and the Indiana state constitution devotes a number of chapters to educating our kids. And the last time I checked, the federal Constitution doesn't say a single thing about education.”

Conservatives argue the department has cost taxpayers billions of dollars but hasn’t significantly improved educational outcomes in the country.

“Nearly 45 years after its creation under former President Jimmy Carter, high school seniors’ math and reading outcomes remain stagnant,” wrote Kevin Roberts and Lindsay Burke with the Heritage Foundation. “Worse still, the academic achievement gap between the United States’ poorest and wealthiest students, a gap of four grade levels, has not narrowed since the department’s inception.”

The department also has injected identity politics into education, critics argue. While federal law prohibits the agency from interfering with curriculum or hiring decisions, the Biden administration changed federal regulations to redefine “sex” as including gender identity. The Education Department then threatened to remove federal funding from schools that did not do the same.

A federal judge struck down that rule in January. But that’s the kind of interference that lawmakers like Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., say has to go.

“For far too long the Department of Education has catered to far-left bureaucrats at the expense of moms and dads,” Britt said when introducing McMahon at her confirmation hearing last month. “It has removed parental rights from the equation, promoted radical ideologies in the classroom, and supported allowing men and boys to play in women and girls sports. Enough is enough.”

Congress annually funds the Education Department with roughly $80 billion, a quarter of which is sent to state and local governments. The rest is used for loans and research. The department manages a $1.4 trillion student loan portfolio.

The federal government plays a modest role in the overall funding of primary and secondary education. According to a 2024 report by the Congressional Research Service, federal funding accounts for less than 10% of annual revenues for public K-12 schools.

Many education leaders are worried about what will happen to that funding. Carol Burris, the executive director of the Network for Public Education Foundation, says low-income students are top of mind for her.

“The higher the level of poverty, the more help the school gets,” Burris said when asked about how federal funding plays into state-level administration. “So, the schools that would really be at risk would be a lot of your high-poverty inner city schools as well as your rural schools.” Alaska and North Dakota receive the most federal funding per K-12 pupil, according to the Education Data Initiative.

The department also plays a central role in funding education for children with disabilities Reed Scott-Schwalbach, president of the Oregon Education Association, told WORLD.

“Before we had the IDEA law, we had individual states making decisions about students with disabilities, and students with disabilities weren’t being served,” Scott-Schwalbach said. “They were being shuttled off to institutions or they were being kept at home. So it is really concerning to me and to my colleagues that we maintain federal oversight run by people who know what it is to provide a good quality education.”

McMahon said other departments can take over congressionally mandated operations. For example, the departments of Treasury or Commerce can service student loans, while Health and Human Services could reclaim responsibility for IDEA.

The administration's retooling of the department is almost sure to receive a legal challenge. John Malcolm, vice president of the Institute for Congressional Government at the Heritage Foundation, believes Trump has all the power needed to cut funding and personnel. But if the functions Congress outlined for it halt, Malcolm believes that could create vulnerabilities.

“There’s an argument to be made—that he hasn’t implemented something that he was required to do. You could make an argument that he’s failing his constitutional obligation to see to it that the laws are being faithfully executed. We will see how he handles that,” Malcolm said.

Completely abolishing the department would require an act of Congress. GOP leaders on Capitol Hill Hill have not mentioned whether they plan to include such a change in their upcoming tax-and-border bill.