What Happens if the Department of Education Is Abolished? What We Know

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

54% : The Department of Education has been around in some form since the mid-19th century, with its current cabinet-level form being created when a law passed by Congress and signed by President Jimmy Carter spun it off from the broader Department of Health, Education and Welfare in 1979.
54% : Even something like Common Core, a divisive attempt to standardize teaching material across many states in an effort to better prepare students for college or the workforce, wasn't a Department of Education project.
50% : On the surface that's what Trump is calling for: the department's activities by and large sent down to the state level or potentially to other federal departments.
50% : For more on student loans, find out how you can start preparing for the end of the SAVE Act.
42% : But it's possible that the Supreme Court could find a rationale, thin though it might be, to let Trump do it.
42% : "If it became a reality, Trump's power grab would steal resources for our most vulnerable students, explode class sizes, cut job training programs, make higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle class families, take away special education services for students with disabilities, and gut student civil rights protections," Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association labor union, told NBC News.
33% : This pushback was supercharged, however, when Trump pledged during his 2024 campaign to do just that: shutter the department completely.
26% : Based on the description of the Department of Education's duties described above, critics of Trump have argued that abolishing it would disproportionately harm the ability of disabled, lower-to-middle-income or marginalized to access a quality education.
21% : Trump and his allies have frequently alleged that the Department of Education is responsible for the spread of certain teachings in public schools that they are opposed to.
17% : Trump can strongly advocate for the closure of the Department of Education, direct McMahon to prepare for its closure and slash its resources, but he cannot, by himself, order it to be shut down.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.