Republicans Want to Abolish the Department of Education

Summary: Recently, after Donald Trump’s promise to abolish the DoE, a Republican South Dakota senator has introduced S.5384 – A bill to abolish the Department of Education, and for other purposes. The text of this bill has not been released to the public yet. 

The Department of Education in the United States was put in place in 1979 and conversations to abolish the DoE began in the early 1980s. The DoE was created in order to gather information, provide guidance to schools, ensure equal opportunities for students, and promote educational excellence.

Trump accused the DoE of indoctrinating students with critical race theory, political studies, and sex and gender studies. He cannot do this alone, he would need the support of the majority of the senators, and currently the senate has a majority of republicans.

Abolishing the Department of Education could have dire consequences for federal employees and public school students alike. The DoE had a budget of $238 billion in the 2024 fiscal year, which was 4% of the total federal budget. Upon abolishing the DoE, certain jobs that the department does would be transferred to other agencies within the government for oversight, and educational curriculum and goals would be left up to individual states.

Republican states advocate for this bill, and they are passing their own laws to require Bible studies in public schools and/or have copies of the Christian Bible to be in every classroom, and to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms. They say they support religious freedom and studies but want to proselytize Christianity to students without consideration for other religions or students without a religious affiliation.

Schools were not required to give inclusive education for students with disabilities or English language learners, meaning that those students were often segregated or excluded from the regular classroom. Disabled and ELL students were discriminated against and looked down upon, they were not always given the resources and accommodations they needed to succeed in school. Federal programs were put into place in order to protect and prioritize students with diverse needs.

Wealthy neighborhoods get better schools because school funding mostly comes from property taxes. Federal funding for schools is intended to level the playing field so that lower-income areas can have access to the same resources as wealthy schools.

Abolishing the Department of Education would take federal oversight out of education and place all decisions in the hands of individual states. States would have the power to defund programs for at-risk youth, LGBTQIA+ students, and low-income families. They would have the power to rewrite curriculum to eliminate accurate history on slavery, civil rights, genocide, and war, so they can educate students how the state sees fit.

Governor Mark Dayton, by the Office of Governor Mark Dayton, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr

Civil rights protections for students may be jeopardized if the Department of Education is abolished.

The following are some of the legal protections for students which the DoE supervises currently.

Title IX: A federal law prohibiting discrimination based on sex in schools and education programs which receive federal funding.

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA): A law ensuring that students with disabilities are given a free and appropriate public education (FAPE) and that those schools work with the parents or caretakers to develop an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) for the students. 

Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA): A law protecting students with disabilities from being discriminated against and receive due process of the law.

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973: A law protecting people with disabilities from discrimination in programs which receive federal funding.

Trump and other government officials also tout “school choice”  while promoting the abolition of the Department of Education. That is the idea that parents should be able to choose where they want their children to go to school, whether it is public, private, or a charter school.

The kicker is, parents already have those options in many areas of the country. If they want their children to go to an alternate school, they can choose to do that if they can afford it. It is the luxury of choice.

Parents who can afford private schools can send their students there; those schools are wealthy but they are not held accountable for their curriculum quality, and they are privately funded, usually by wealthy families.

Charter schools are publicly funded but they operate outside of the school district they are in. Parents, teachers, administrators, and other community members control charter schools and the curriculum. Private and charter schools do not always provide transportation for students, so parents have to be able to afford to take their children to school.

Dismantling the Department of Education may result in public schools losing funding and falling behind, which would create a larger achievement gap.

This is a developing story.