by Aziah Siid and Joseph Williams
Donald Trump, the once and perhaps future president, talks about it frequently. Project 2025, the radical conservative wish list for dismantling the federal government.
They both call for the Department of Education to be demolished.
While it’s become one of Trump’s favorite talking points, he’s the latest in a long line of powerful, right-wing conservatives — starting with President Ronald Reagan — who want to abolish the 157-year-old department.
Through implementation of laws like the Every Student Succeeds Act and the Higher Education Act, the DOE sets the nation’s education policy while also guaranteeing a fair and equitable education for all children. But it also protects Black childrens’ access to a K-12 education and has helped Black students pay for college.
What’s less obvious is why far-right Republicans want to blow it up in the first place.
Trump has repeatedly saidto “close the Department of Education, move education back to the states,”
Donald Trump, the once and perhaps future Republican president, talks about it frequently. Project 2025 — the radical conservative wish list for dismantling the federal government — agrees with him.
They both call for the Department of Education to be demolished.
While eliminating a cabinet-level department that sets national education policy is one of Trump’s favorite talking points, he’s not the first president who’s had the idea. The former president is the latest in a long line of powerful, right-wing conservatives — starting with President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s — who have wanted to abolish the 157-year-old department.
Through federal laws like the Every Student Succeeds Act and the Higher Education Act, the DOE sets goals and recommendations, which states generally follow. But it also uses federal money and legal power to help guarantee a fair and equitable education for all children. And it has helped countless Black students pay for college.
What’s less obvious is why far-right Republicans want to blow it up in the first place.
Like Trump, the Republican Party’s 2024 campaign platform argues that the DOE is an unnecessary government bureaucracy that wastes taxpayer money and interferes in local decisions. Conservatives don’t like the department’s push for racial equity in schools, for example, or its achievement incentives or its protection of gay and transgendered kids.
Nevertheless, its biggest K-12 programs by dollar amount go to high-poverty schools and funds programs for students with disabilities. That’s why Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s Democratic Party opponent, has vowed to protect the DOE: “We are not going to let him eliminate the Department of Education that funds our public schools.”
Here are three facts you should know about why the DOE is important to Black students and why it should stay.
1. States Already Have the Power to Set Education Policy
Formerly a division of the old Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the DOE does a lot of different tasks, including monitoring school performance and promote evidence-based practices. Its highest-profile work is protecting and enforcing students’ civil rights. But while it does have a policy agenda, sometimes sets education goals and often uses financial incentives to implement education policy, like the Every Student Succeeds Act and No Child Left Behind, it does not directly dictate what states can and can’t teach. State education departments have the freedom to set their own standards.
2. The DOE Encourages Diversity, Which Helps All Kids
Research shows that Black representation in both majority white and predominantly Black schools helps boost the learning experience of all students. As a result, the federal DOE encourages schools to make diversity a priority — and calls on its Office of Civil Rights Enforcement to make sure minority students’ rights to an education are protected. More on that later.
Under the Biden administration, the department is investing more than $300 million in programs that increase school integration, including the Magnet Schools Assistance Program that aims to reduce racial isolation. The creation of the Fostering Diverse Schools initiative is also a new initiative to increase school socioeconomic diversity, which awarded more than $14 million in new grants.
The administration also secured funding and grants designed to diversify the teacher workforce, which is more than 80% white and female. It involves everything from loan forgiveness to aspiring teachers to designating money for HBCUs, which train a majority of Black teachers.
3. The DOE Protects The Rights of All Children
Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the DOE took on the mission of equal access to education for all students, regardless of race. That meant enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, among others, which prohibited discrimination in education based on race, sex, and disability.
In recent years, however, the DOE’s role on that front has shifted, depending on which party holds the White House. The Obama administration, for example, used the department to try and disrupt the schools to prison pipeline: DOE officials told schools that data showing a disproportionate suspension of Black students could indicate civil rights violations. The DOE under Trump, however, rolled back those rules.
Now, the Biden White House has made protection of LGBTQ students the new civil rights frontier. It issued new Title IX rules that guard against discrimination, particularly against trans students. But conservative states are pushing back.
