Even with her expertise, she still appreciates the support she gets through a University of Arkansas-run network. With funding from a federal grant, 250 participants from across the state work on increasing and for delays in speech, motor or social skills. 

“We try to catch those things early,” said Eichler. The network helped her become nationally accredited and now she’s one of the top-ranked providers in Arkansas. “The better we get, the better our kids get. It’s a win-win for our state.”

But President Donald Trump now wants to eliminate the funding that paid for that network and similar projects nationwide. Launched in 2014 during the Obama administration, were intended to expand pre-K for 4-year-olds from low-income families. During his first term, Trump significantly the grants into what Katharine Stevens, an early-childhood policy expert, described as a “conservative-friendly” effort to promote parent choice and put decisions about improving early learning in the hands of states.

The funds benefit kids from birth to age 5, not just pre-K students. That’s why it’s hard for her to understand Trump’s reason for eliminating them. 

“I sympathize with people who are feeling like the federal government has just grown way out of control,” said Stevens, founder and president of the Center on Child and Family Policy, a right-leaning early childhood think tank. But the grants, she said, have delivered “a lot of bang for the buck” by making it easier for parents to find high-quality programs. “Just doesn’t make sense to end it.” 

Despite his first-term goal of allowing states to take the lead, Trump wants to cut the program because it doesn’t increase the supply of preschool slots. The would save $539 million. Rachel Greszler, a senior research fellow at the right-wing Heritage Foundation, whose has guided much of the president’s second term, said the funding falls short because child care and early education programs don’t meet the demand. 

“These taxpayer dollars have primarily gone towards the planning and administrative side of preschool — things like ‘identifying needs’ and ‘engaging stakeholders,’ ” she said. “What’s needed most is more child care providers and more slots for children.”

The grant program might result in or incentive payments for providers, but doesn’t necessarily bring new teachers into the field, she said.  

In an earlier , the Trump administration pinned its objections on former President Joe Biden’s use of the “unproductive funds” to “push [diversity, equity and inclusion] on to toddlers.” As an example, a brief paragraph points to Minnesota, which listed DEI buzzwords like “racial equity” and “intersectionality” as for the grant in 2021. 

But many of the grants have gone to red states like Alabama, Florida and Idaho that have used the money to keep parents in the workforce and of early care and education programs, including Head Start.

Last October, 10 states and the District of Columbia received a , totaling $87 million over three years. One grantee, Kansas, is set to receive $21 million. In keeping with the to reduce regulations, the to speed up the fingerprinting process for staff and streamline applications for extra funding.

Minnesota intends to use its $24 million to support , family engagement efforts and salaries for early-childhood mental health professionals. The goals that the administration labeled DEI are not for classroom activities, said Anna Kurth, a spokeswoman for the Minnesota Department of Education, but to help children from low-income families gain access to services. 

As Congress debates next year’s budget, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, ranking Democrat on the and a former preschool teacher, said she hopes the grants continue. 

“President Trump talks a lot about parental choice, and here he is pushing to ax investments to expand families’ child care and pre-K options,” she said in a statement to ����Ӱ��. “Congress has got to reject these cuts, and I’ll be doing everything I can to ensure we do.”

It’s unclear whether Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who chairs the committee, agrees with the president’s budget plan. But in announcing a Preschool Development Grant in 2023, she said it would “build an educational foundation for Maine children that will benefit them for the rest of their lives.”

‘Shore it up’

Parents have before their children become old enough for school, including long waitlists for good programs and costs that are often out of reach. Providers face their own financial obstacles. They’re compared to those in professions requiring similar training, and over 40% depend on and other public assistance programs to get by.

Stanford University’s , which has captured the impact of the pandemic on families and the workforce, shows that the percentage of early education providers struggling to afford at least one basic need increased in 2022 and was still high in 2024. 

Eliminating the grants won’t solve those problems, said Philip Fisher, who directs the Stanford Center on Early Childhood and founded the survey.

“If you think about a market that’s teetering on the edge of collapse, resources that go into that market are going to help shore it up,” he said. “This may not directly put money into the pockets of providers or parents to pay for care, but it creates a more efficient system and enhances quality — a huge issue for a lot of parents.”

States have used the funds to address some of those challenges and to encourage early education leaders from school districts, child care centers and faith-based programs to tackle them together.

With a for 4-year-olds already in place, used its roughly $48 million in federal grants to coach child care providers, help teachers get bachelor’s degrees and improve transitions for kids into kindergarten.

The University of Arkansas spent the it received in 2023 to improve quality in rural areas, like Eichler’s town of Romance, about 45 miles north of Little Rock. 

“Large centers just aren’t viable in some of our communities,” said Kathy Pillow-Price, director of Early Care and Education Projects at the university. “Family child care providers really support us and our workforce.” 

‘Private and faith-based’

With advocates concerned about the future of Head Start, which the administration initially proposed to eliminate, the fate of the Preschool Development Grants has received less attention. 

Trump’s budget, released May 30, preserves Head Start — rejecting, for now, a Project 2025 to end it. The document didn’t specifically cite Preschool Development Grants, but it called for shifting more child care funding toward . Trump’s Jan. 29 on school choice echoed that theme by calling for families to use their child care subsidies for“private and faith-based options.”

But experts say the grants have already met those expectations. As in Arkansas, Idaho used its funds to support the growth of licensed in “child care deserts,” like rural areas. Leaders also offered providers training in business practices. 

Christian and other religious early-childhood programs have been among those benefiting from the federal money. According to a , “faith-based entities” were among the new partners in 2019 participating in state and local efforts to improve services. 

The grant program has been a boon to member schools by supporting quality improvements and training opportunities for staff, said Althea Penn, director of early education for the Association of Christian Schools International. 

Stevens, with the Center on Child and Family Policy, remembers how the goals of the program from primarily expanding pre-K during the Obama years to encouraging states to identify their own priorities under Trump. 

“We need state-level innovation,” she said. “That is the entire purpose of these grants.”

It is evident that the White House will not stop until it wipes out the most basic protections and supports for the American people, including the youngest children. The first step was the attempt to defund Head Start and Early Head Start, impacting 800,000 young children across the nation. This order was halted by a federal judge in Washington, thanks to the lawsuits filed by Democracy Forward and attorneys general from 23 states. 

The mass layoffs will severely hamper the department’s ability to execute on its core responsibilities. This move is a direct assault on millions of students, teachers and families. It is clearly a precursor to dismantling the department without congressional consent, which would have an even more devastating impact. The department serves and protects the most vulnerable children and young adults, ensuring that they have equal access to education. This includes:

• 26 million students from low-income backgrounds — more than half of all K-12 students — who rely on the department for reasonable class sizes; school meals; tutoring; afterschool and summer programs; school supplies such as laptops and books; parent engagement programs; and, in some cases, transportation

• 9.8 million students enrolled in rural schools
  
• 7.4. million students with disabilities
  
• 5 million English learners
  
• 1.1 million students experiencing homelessness
  
• 87 million college students who receive Pell Grants and student loans 

The department was created in 1980 with a single, crucial purpose: to ensure equal access to education and to promote educational excellence throughout the nation. Its creation followed decades of systemic inequities that left children in disadvantaged communities without the same learning opportunities as their more privileged peers. The department’s work has been a critical safeguard against discrimination in schools, whether on the basis of race, disability, gender or income. 

Without the federal government’s intervention and oversight, the more than 13 million children who live in poverty would be even more vulnerable to systemic inequities. The department ensures that federal dollars are distributed to those students most in need, ensuring that underserved children have the same opportunities for success as their wealthier peers. Without the federal oversight and the department’s support, these students will fall even further behind, and the national achievement gap will grow wider.

The federal government is the only entity that can ensure a baseline level of educational equity across the entire nation. The department holds states accountable for ensuring that all children, regardless of where they live or what their socioeconomic status may be, receive a quality education. If this accountability is removed, the children most at risk — those in underfunded schools, children of color, children with disabilities, English learners and those experiencing homelessness — will be the first to suffer. These children would be denied the critical services and protections they need to succeed in school and in life.

Moreover, the president’s plan to turn education policy over to the states would completely dismantle the federal safety net that ensures that the most vulnerable children are not left behind. Each of the 50 states has different priorities, resources and political climates. While some might be able to provide excellent educational opportunities, others will leave children behind, particularly in rural or economically disadvantaged areas. Inequities between states could widen to an intolerable degree, and the resulting lack of uniform educational standards would only further disadvantage the children who need the most help.

To be clear, the department cannot be dissolved at the whim of a sitting president. Under the Constitution, only an act of Congress can create or dismantle a federal agency. The president does not have the unilateral power to eliminate an entire federal institution that serves the educational needs of millions of children across this country. Attempting to do so would not only undermine the law, but also inflict tremendous harm to the very foundation of America’s educational system.

The idea that dismantling the department could somehow improve that system is not only misguided, but dangerously naïve.

It’s vital that we, as a nation, recognize the long-term damage this action would cause. The attempt to dismantle the Department of Education is not just an attack on a government agency — it is an attack on the future of America’s children.

To parents across the country: This policy is not only unconstitutional — it is a grave threat to your children’s future. Whether your child is in a classroom in New York, Los Angeles or a small town in the Midwest, the U.S. Department of Education has worked to ensure that their educational opportunities are protected, funded and regulated. A president who seeks to eliminate this essential agency is jeopardizing the future of every single student in America.

This is why we must all rise up and make our voices heard. We must demand that our leaders stop this dangerous plan in its tracks, that they fix what isn’t working and that they use this opportunity to reimagine public education and invest in a more effective, equitable system that gives all children the opportunity to succeed.

In this politically charged era, there’s one thing both parties agree on: the benefits of high school career pathways. 

With strong bipartisan support, career and technical education programs are poised to be a centerpiece of education policy over the next few years — both federally and in California. That’s good news for students taking agriscience, cabinetry, game design and other hands-on courses that may lead to high-paying careers.

Education advocates hail this as a boon for high schools. Students enrolled in career training courses tend to have . And business leaders say that strong career education can boost a local economy.

But there are still many unknowns, and some education experts worry that an expansion of career education will come at the expense of college-preparation programs, or lead to a return to “tracking,” in which schools steer certain students — often low-income students — toward careers that tend to pay less than those that require college degrees.

“This could be a great opportunity for career and technical education, but we have to do it right,” said Andy Rotherham, co-founder of Bellwether, a nonprofit educational consulting organization. “There’s a lot at stake.”

Funding is a primary question mark. While Republicans strongly support career education, it’s unclear if that enthusiasm will translate to more money — especially if Congress eliminates the Department of Education, as President-elect Trump has vowed to do. 

Career education classes can be some of the most expensive programs in a school district. Supplies, up-to-date equipment, teacher training, smaller class sizes, operation costs and students’ certification exams can cost millions, and the costs only increase over time. Schools spend 20%-40% more to educate students in career programs than they spend on those who aren’t, .

Most federal funding for career education comes from a 1960s law meant to improve career education. But that funding has not kept up with the escalating costs. Last year Congress allotted $1.4 billion, which was distributed to states through grants. California received $142 million, and supplemented that with an additional $1 billion.

“It’s wonderful to see this bipartisan support, but we’d like it to lead to continued investment,” said Alisha Hyslop, chief policy, research and content officer at the Association for Career and Technical Education, an advocacy group. 

Career education and tracking

Career and technical education has waxed and waned since its inception in the early 20th century as a way to prepare students, usually from working-class or immigrant families, for jobs in skilled trades.

For decades, most high schools in the U.S. had some form of vocational education. Those programs came under scrutiny in the 1980s and ’90s as some complained about tracking practices that left many students without the option to attend a 4-year college because they hadn’t taken the required coursework.

Partly in response to that criticism, former President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act in the early 2000s encouraged schools to promote college for all students. As a result, many schools cut back their career education offerings and added more advanced academic classes.

Then the 2008 financial crisis hit. High unemployment coupled with the soaring cost of college led schools to revive their career training programs, but with less tracking. Schools started encouraging all students to take career education classes, and the classes themselves were updated. Welding and auto shop were joined by computer science, graphic design, environmental studies, health care and other fields. In California, students are encouraged to take a career pathway as well as the required classes for admission to public 4-year colleges, although last year only about 11% of students completed both, according to .

Welders vs. philosophers

Career and technical education is a focal point of , the conservative policy roadmap written by the Heritage Foundation as well as the Republican party education platform and President-elect Trump’s nominee for education secretary, Linda McMahon. McMahon headed a pro-Trump political action group called America First Action, whose policies include an  in K-12 schools. The Republican platform reads, “(We) will emphasize education to prepare students for great jobs and careers, supporting … schools that offer meaningful work experience.”

Sen. Marco Rubio, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State, put it more succinctly: “Welders make more money than philosophers. We need more welders and less philosophers,” .

Career education has also been a priority for Democrats. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and the Legislature have all promoted career education. In 2022 Newsom created the Golden State Pathways program, a $470 million investment in high school career education, and followed up a year later with the , outlining a long-term vision. Newsom described it as “a game changer for thousands of students.”

In California, the goal is to , and tie pathways — sequences of two or three classes — to the local job market. For example, a  at a high school near the Port of Long Beach includes classes in global logistics and international business. A pathway at Hollywood High trains students for jobs in the entertainment industry. 

More ties to business?

But some educators worry about the fate of career education if the Department of Education, which administers the Perkins Act, is eliminated. Project 2025 suggests moving it to the Department of Labor, where it would likely have stronger ties to business and fewer ties to education organizations. That could impact whether pathway programs continue to have academic components, or include college preparation classes.

“Businesses love CTE because it socializes one of their big costs. Taxpayers are paying to train their workers,” said David Stern, education professor emeritus at UC Berkeley who’s an expert on career education. 

Hyslop shares that concern. 

“Certainly CTE has connections to the economy, but at its heart it’s an education program. It’s about preparing students for their future, whatever that future may be,” she said.

A broader question may be whether the push for career education is part of a backlash against college generally. College enrollment  for a decade, coinciding with a .

Meanwhile, Trump has proposed big cuts to higher education, and has often expressed disdain for what he described as colleges’ leftward tilt. Project 2025 calls for the government to place trade schools on equal footing with 4-year colleges.

“This new interest in CTE captures the anti-elitist sentiment of the time,” Stern said. He added that preparation for college does not have to conflict with preparation for careers, and some programs, such as the , prepare students for both. 

Rotherham agreed. “On the right, there’s definitely antagonism toward college,” he said.

But they both said regardless of the politics behind it, a national focus on career education could be transformative — if it doesn’t railroad students away from college opportunities. Ideally, students can gain career experience in high school, while also learning poetry and civics and other important academic subjects, Rotherham said.

“Power is having choices,” Rotherham said. “That’s what we want for kids. The option to change their mind if they want.”

This was originally published on .

Education has never been a top priority of President-elect Donald Trump’s, but that doesn’t mean schools — or students — will be immune from Trump’s agenda in the next four years, education experts say. 

Trump may slash school funding, cut civil rights protections and gut the U.S. Department of Education, based on his previous statements and the visions outlined in the  and , a conservative manifesto reimagining the federal government. 

But students may experience the most devastating effects. Trump has  of undocumented residents and crackdowns on LGBTQ rights, which could lead to higher absenteeism, higher rates of bullying and greater anxiety generally on school campuses.

“The stress created by the threat of deportations cannot be overestimated,” said UCLA education professor John Rogers, who’s studied how politics plays out in K-12 education. “It absolutely will have an impact on attendance, and it absolutely will affect parents’ ability to participate in their children’s education.”

Student  somewhat in California since the COVID-19 pandemic, but remains very high — 24.3% last year. During the first Trump presidency, Latino student attendance and academic performance dropped significantly in areas affected by deportation arrests, . 

During Trump’s first term, his deportation efforts were foiled a bit by the courts and by disorganization at the White House, Rogers said, but those obstacles aren’t likely to be present this time.

That could leave thousands of children vulnerable to deportation or becoming separated from their parents. More than  were undocumented in the most recent census count, and almost half of California children have , the Public Policy Institute of California reported. Most of the undocumented residents are from Latin America, but a majority of newer arrivals come from Asia.

Threat to cut $8 billion for California schools 

LGBTQ students are also likely to face challenges under a Trump presidency. Trump has often disparaged “woke” policies that protect the rights of trans students and threatened to withhold federal funding for states that uphold those policies. In California, that could mean a loss of about $8 billion, or 7% of the overall education budget.

But beyond financial matters, the anti-LGBTQ language is likely to exacerbate challenges for trans students, Rogers said. Students’ rights to use bathrooms and play on sports teams that align with their gender identity are among the protections that Republicans have singled out for elimination.   

“This election proved that the culturally divisive rhetoric can be an effective way to garner public support,” Rogers said. “Now that Trump has a bully pulpit, I expect we’ll see an amplification of this rhetoric.”

Mike Kirst, former president of the State Board of Education, agreed that the threat of deportations may be Trump’s biggest effect on California schools. 

“If they succeed in deporting a lot of families, that will be horrific for California schools,” Kirst said. “That’s what keeps me up at night.”

More power to the states?

The other proposals — dismantling the U.S. Department of Education, or eliminating “woke” curriculum, for example — would be complicated and time-consuming to accomplish, he said. Eliminating the Department of Education would require majority votes in Congress, which would be a difficult hurdle because the department provides many popular programs with bipartisan support, such as special education.

Curriculum is left to the states, and the federal government has no input.

Traditionally, Republican presidents have sought to minimize the federal government’s role in education, leaving most decisions to the states. If Trump takes that approach, California’s mostly Democratic leadership would have some independence from the Republican power brokers in Washington, D.C., Kirst said.  

Regardless, Trump would be able to use executive orders to scale back Title I, which provides benefits to low-income students, and Title IX, which prohibits gender discrimination. And school choice, school vouchers and promotion of charter schools are likely to be priorities of the incoming Secretary of Education, although it’s not clear how much impact those policies would have in California.

Trump has also been outspoken in his opposition to teachers unions, saying he wants to eliminate tenure and institute merit pay.

The California Teachers Association, which campaigned heavily for Vice President Kamala Harris, said it was undeterred by Trump’s attacks.

“We are prepared to stand up against any attacks on our students, public education, workers’ rights and our broader communities that may come,” union president David Goldberg said. “We’re committed to fight for the future we all deserve.”

In a rare display of unity, Los Angeles Unified board members and union leaders also vowed to push back against any policies that would negatively affect students and families.

“We stand together in our commitment to protect, affirm and support everyone in the Los Angeles Unified community,” the groups released in a joint statement. “We will always provide a safe, welcoming and inclusive environment for all students, families and employees.”

State leaders fight back

At the state level, elected officials said they’d fight Trump’s efforts to interfere in California. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond on Friday said he’d ask the governor to backfill any funds the federal government withholds from California, and he’d sponsor legislation to protect students.

He also reminded school districts that laws already exist to protect undocumented and LGBTQ students. , passed this year, bans school staff from “outing” students to their families. And , a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court case, prohibits schools from denying students an education based on their immigration status. The state offers a plethora of guidance on how schools can support  and  students and their families. 

“While others demonize education, we will continue to help California students, wherever they are,” Thurmond said.

Attorney General Rob Bonta vowed to fight Trump’s policies with legal action, much as his predecessor Xavier Becerra did by filing or joining more than 100 lawsuits during the first Trump term. Gov. Gavin Newsom last week said he’d work with the Legislature to  and otherwise “” California.

Students, meanwhile, are waiting to see how the policies — and pushback — will play out in the coming months. Maria Davila, a high school senior in Beaumont in Riverside County, said that for now, she’s not overly worried about how a Trump presidency would affect schools. Some of her peers are concerned, she said, but she has faith that student activism and adult leadership will protect young people from the most extreme outcomes.

“In California we have legislative leaders who listen to students and care about young people,” said Davila, a volunteer with a youth advocacy group called GenUp. “I think we’ll get the support we need. Students can be hopeful.”

This was originally published on .

When Donald Trump told Elon Musk one of his first acts as president would be to “close the Department of Education, move education back to the states,” he was invoking a GOP promise that goes back to President Ronald Reagan and the department’s founding.

Yet through multiple Republican administrations, including Trump’s first term, the U.S. Department of Education has persisted.

That hasn’t stopped Democrats from sounding the alarm that Trump’s views epitomize the GOP’s bad intentions for public schools. The fact that the Republican Party’s platform , as does the , has only .

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“We are not going to let him eliminate the Department of Education that funds our public schools,” Vice President Kamala Harris said to thunderous applause in her speech at the Democratic National Convention, where she placed the department alongside prized institutions and programs like Social Security, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act.

The department has become a “kind of trophy” in a larger debate about the meaning of public education, said Rick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

In fact, he said, “The Department of Education actually has very little to do with that debate. Abolishing it doesn’t advance school choice and keeping it doesn’t do much for traditional district schools. But it’s become a symbol of which side you’re on in that debate.”

So, what exactly does the U.S. Department of Education do? Why do so many conservatives want to see it go away? Why has it survived? And what would it take for that to actually happen?

The U.S. Department of Education: a brief history

The federal government spent money on education and developed education policies . But the U.S. Department of Education didn’t become a stand-alone agency until 1980, when it split off from the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

President Jimmy Carter advocated for the creation of the department to fulfill a campaign promise to the National Education Association. Congress passed the Department of Education Organization Act in 1979. Some Democrats and the American Federation of Teachers opposed the idea, due to fears about and concerns that it would cater to the NEA’s interests.

Reagan, Carter’s successor, campaigned on abolishing the brand-new department. But Reagan’s first education secretary, Terrel Bell, commissioned the landmark report “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform,” warning that America was losing its competitive edge. It advocated for a strong federal role to ensure students received a high-quality education.

“If the federal government is coming out with a report that shows all the things that need to be fixed and at the same time, we’re backing out of it, those are not compatible positions,” said Michael Feuer, dean of George Washington University’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development.

The U.S. Department of Education does a lot of things, and . Its biggest K-12 programs by dollar amount . Some of its most high-profile and controversial work involves enforcing civil rights protections. The department also plays a major role in distributing financial aid for higher education.

The department is . Before the infusion of pandemic relief dollars, the federal government only covered about 8% of K-12 educational costs. In recent years, it’s been closer to 11%. But isn’t necessarily easy.

Why do conservatives want to end the Department of Education?

Some of the dislike is purely ideological.

For conservatives, less government is better. Education is not mentioned directly in the U.S. Constitution. And a new department overseeing functions that remain mostly the purview of local government is low-hanging fruit.

Under Democratic administrations, the department has also sided with more progressive approaches to education and to civil rights enforcement.

The Obama administration, for example, told schools that if they suspended or expelled Black students at much higher rates than other groups, that could be a sign they were . Critics said the rules pushed schools to adopt laxer disciplinary policies that made schools less safe. . (The Biden administration has not reinstated them.)

More recently, the Biden administration issued Title IX rules that provide greater and more explicit protections for LGBTQ students — .

Jonathan Butcher, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said states have been a source of innovation, like charter schools and educational savings accounts. The federal department not only distracts states from efforts to improve education but creates unnecessary bureaucracy.

All the while, achievement gaps based on race and poverty haven’t gone away, Butcher noted, though .

“We have ample evidence that it is not serving its purpose,” Butcher said of the department. Abolishing it, he added, is “consistent with both the interest in smaller government and the interest in doing what’s right for kids.”

What does Trump say about abolishing the Department of Education?

In his , the social media platform previously known as Twitter, Trump said the U.S. had a “horrible” education ranking at the bottom of developed countries while spending the most.

It’s not totally clear what sources Trump was using. On , the U.S. ranked sixth in reading, 10th in science, and 26th in math among 81 countries. show , especially . The U.S. does spend , including many that score better on key measures.

Trump said some states won’t do well, but many would do a better job on their own while spending less money.

“Of the 50, I would bet that 35 would do great, and 15 of them or 20 of them would be as good as Norway,” Trump told Musk. “You know Norway is considered great.”

He said the federal government could provide “a little monitor. You want to make sure they are teaching English, as an example. Give us a little English, right?”

Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request to elaborate on the candidate’s plans.

How would abolishing the Department of Education work?

Abolishing a federal department would require an act of Congress, just as creating one does. It likely would also , which the idea doesn’t have.

U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, has to abolish the department — but the bill has failed to gain traction.

Despite that, Massie said his proposals were serious. “Damn right I want to terminate the Department of Education,” he said in a statement. “Public education in America has gone downhill ever since this bureaucracy was created.”

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, widely seen as a blueprint for a future Trump administration — — lays out a much more detailed plan that considers necessary steps from Congress and the executive branch.

For example, the plan says civil rights enforcement should move to the Department of Justice, educational data collection to the U.S. Census Bureau, and support for Native American students to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Butcher acknowledged that BIA schools don’t have a good track record. But he argued that the agency was better positioned to work on improving educational outcomes.

Meanwhile, Project 2025 says Title I funding for high-poverty schools should be turned into vouchers and then phased out over time, while money from the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act should be given directly to parents.

On a podcast earlier this year, Lindsey Burke, the Heritage Foundation’s director of the Center for Education Policy and author of Project 2025’s education chapter, of simply abolishing the department.

But she said the executive branch could take certain actions on its own, such as ending student loan forgiveness programs and not enforcing the new Title IX rules.

Ending the Education Department now ‘part of the conversation’

Hess, of the American Enterprise Institute, said he doesn’t oppose eliminating the department, but the idea has become a kind of “boogie man or quick fix” that’s become a on the federal role in education.

“So much of the culture war that reached a boil during the pandemic focused on schools and colleges, which made the department more contested terrain and made education more contested terrain,” he said.

He’s skeptical that a future Trump administration would get any closer to eliminating the department than the first one did. And a could make it even harder to make dramatic changes via executive order, Hess said.

Feuer, of George Washington University, thinks the department has made positive contributions, despite some flaws, and wants to see it stick around. An unfriendly administration could dramatically cut funding or eliminate programs without eliminating the department. That’s the wrong debate to have when , he said.

“If we now take this really important moment and get everyone fighting about maintaining the department, instead of keeping our eyes on the kids and the teachers and doing some good work, that would be a really unfortunate distraction,” he said.

Butcher acknowledged that it’s “a big, ambitious idea,” but said it’s also a serious one. Past efforts, he said, lacked willpower and an advocate who prioritized it.

He was encouraged when every candidate in Republican presidential primary debates last year (except Trump, who did not participate) said they .

“We have made it a part of the conversation,” Butcher said.

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The full program, entitled , is a roadmap for conservative rule whose heft rivals that of the more prolix Harry Potter novels. Laid out in 43 bullet-pointed pages, its chapter on education offers prescriptions that range from the sweeping to the picayune — proposing both to eliminate Title I grants to high-poverty schools and to revise accreditation requirements under the Higher Education Act. 

The ultimate goal is the wholesale abolition of the Department of Education, with many of its dedicated offices and responsibilities distributed either to states or other agencies. Jack Jennings, a retired policy maven who formerly served as Democrats’ top education aide in the House of Representatives, said that prize may prove difficult to win. 

But even failing the ideal, he argued, the plan offers a step-by-step playbook to shrink the federal government’s role in schools as much as possible over the next four years.

“They want to get rid of the department in the long term, but the way to do that in the short term is by spinning off agencies until they don’t have anything left,” Jennings said. 

With this week’s Republican National Convention putting a spotlight on the party’s aspirations for governance, the text could become the public face of conservative policy throughout the campaign.

Mandate for Leadership is the intellectual product of the right-leaning Heritage Foundation and its efforts to guide the next presidential transition, dubbed Project 2025. It is only the latest of a series of “policy bibles” issued by Heritage, , which have heavily influenced Republicans presidents and presidential candidates.

Each of its 30 sections focuses on revamping a different domain of the U.S. government in the event of a GOP victory in November. Beyond those specific battle plans, its authors with the flexibility to fire and replace thousands of civil servants, sometimes referred to as denizens of the “deep state.”

Perhaps more importantly, the chapter delves into a level of detail seldom seen even among wonk monographs, carefully listing the agency regulations and executive orders it intends to either cull or restore.

President Trump with Project 2025 earlier this month, calling some of its notions “ridiculous and abysmal” after the effort provoked from Democrats and the media. Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, who was announced as the former president’s running mate on Monday, that only Trump will determine the priorities of his potential administration; his own pronouncements on education — including as a means of curbing DEI efforts and to abide by the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling against racial preferences in admissions — have largely avoided the issue of K–12 schools.

Yet Mandate for Leadership’s education portion bears a striking resemblance to that of , which promises to expand school choice, revert educational authority to states, and combat “gender indoctrination” in classrooms.

Several longtime education observers believe that many of those goals could be enacted with the help of friendly courts and Republican majorities in Congress. Jennings said it was rare for a strategy document to both set out an ideological vision and instruct its audience how to realize it “by chapter and verse.”

“This is very meaningful,” Jennings said. “In my experience, it’s the most precise that any candidate for president has been in terms of what they’re going to do in office.”

NEA as ‘radical’ interest group 

Written by Lindsey Burke, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy, much of the Mandate’s chapter on education argues for a dramatic downsizing of Washington’s powers. 

Title I, to nearly two-thirds of public schools, would be transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services and disbursed to states as a block grant with no strings attached; within a decade, the states would assume the responsibility of funding it themselves. Roughly fourteen billion dollars of special education funding under the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act would similarly be shifted to the purview of HHS. 

In both instances, Burke suggests that existing funding be targeted directly to eligible families for use as “micro-education savings accounts.” ESAs, which provide money for families to use on education expenses such as private school tuition, have become the favored school choice policy for Republican governors in the Biden presidency, with new programs just over the last three years.
Federal authority could also be used to broaden school choice in schools under the direct jurisdiction of the U.S. government. The chapter advocates that ESAs be made available to students in Washington, D.C. — , though eligibility in the District is currently limited by income — as well as those attending schools on military bases and on tribal lands.

The chapter continues by calling on lawmakers to rescind the special congressional charter of the National Education Association, which Burke labels a “demonstrably radical special interest group.” The was created in 1906 in recognition of the NEA’s special educational mission, and has periodically from Republicans for exempting the organization from paying property taxes on its sizable headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The proposed revocation would likely have few practical consequences, but would come as a blow to the prestige of America’s largest labor union. The NEA did not respond to requests for comment about the proposition. The Heritage Foundation declined to comment for this story.

Finally, Burke expounds at length on the need for greater protections for family autonomy, including legislation that would allow parents to seek legal redress if the federal government enforces a policy “in a way that undermines their right and responsibility to raise, educate, and care for their children.” In the absence of written parental consent, staff at schools under federal jurisdiction would also be forbidden from addressing students by a name or pronoun other than that which appears on their birth certificate. 

Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, executive director of the LGBT advocacy group GLSEN, said in a statement that a change of that kind would give parents “stronger judicial scrutiny than victims of sex discrimination.”

“Project 2025 exists outside the bounds of common decency and is a roadmap for an extremist refashioning of the United States that erases legal recognition of marginalized communities and tears apart the threads that bind our nation together,” Willingham-Jaggers wrote.

Chester Finn, a senior fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution who served as an assistant secretary of education in the Reagan administration, said Burke’s plan combined perennial conservative calls for a reduced federal role — Heritage’s also advocated that Title I and IDEA grants be made “portable” for families — with a sizable complement of “new regulations, new rights, new programs.”

“To me, the chapter is a little schizophrenic,” Finn said. “It’s about 70 or 80 percent ‘Let’s do away with this,’ and 20 or 30 percent ‘Let’s do new stuff that we want to get done.’ And they want to use their new leverage in the federal government to get it done.”

Both forceful and wide-ranging, the education portion is the most assertive statement of policy intentions that Trump and his conservative allies have offered over the last few years. But pledging to unshackle states from federal interference — or else nationalizing the K–12 push of red states, which have spent the last few years rapidly expanding school choice and passing parental rights laws — the paper may also reflect a somewhat reduced interest in advancing new federal policies and programs. 

The often-vicious education controversies of the last few years, from COVID-related school closures to trans participation in youth sports, helped stoke a parent empowerment movement that captured national attention. But some of that energy dissipated as groups like Moms for Liberty and Republican aspirants like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis failed to convert their followings into national political gains.

An this spring found that just 54 candidates out of the 166 endorsed by Moms for Liberty won their races during the 2023 local election cycle; involving one of the group’s founders has proved a distraction as organizing efforts ramp up for November.

A succession of Republican governors achieved a breakthrough beginning last year by establishing or expanding ESA programs in their states, but lasting victories on culture-war issues have been harder to achieve. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry’s widely-publicized attempt to display the Ten Commandments in every K–12 classroom even by Republican-appointed judges.

Democrats have taken aim at Project 2025, making it their central target as doubts form around whether President Joe Biden will be replaced on the party’s presidential ticket. A recent YouGov poll found that while most Americans still haven’t heard much about the effort, feel unfavorably toward it. 

Heath Brown, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice who studies presidential transitions, said that K–12 schools were “not as central” to President Trump’s political vision as issues like trade and immigration.

“There’s an irony to that because of the prominence of school issues in the conservative movement over the last few years,” Brown remarked. “But it doesn’t seem that the Trump campaign or the MAGA movement is nearly as concerned with schools today as they were 18 months ago.”

The president’s critical year one

The success of the Mandate education plan may hinge significantly on what happens in the next 18 months. 

If Trump wins, Republicans would also need to hold the House of Representatives and retake the Senate in order to advance legislation on codifying parental rights or shrinking the Department of Education. And given how contentious some of those proposals are likely to be, Jennings said, the president would likely need to act fast.

“The president has most of his power the first year he’s in office,” he said. “It’s a four-year term, and if he’s going to get something done, he has to do it right away.”

In the hyper-partisan climate of the 2020s, incoming presidents tend to enjoy their highest poll numbers and maximal sway with Congress in the . But reorganizing government can be achingly slow work: When then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos sought to alter Title IX regulations related to sexual assault on college campus, the process of review and revision . President Biden’s Department of Education spent revising the revisions, which largely brought federal guidance back in line with the pre-Trump standard.

The task of dismantling an entire cabinet department, or at least scattering its responsibilities elsewhere within the executive branch, would be exponentially more complicated, said Brown. Even Republicans otherwise favorable to Trump’s platform might rebel once it became clear that their states and districts could lose out on federal dollars. Discussions have emerged among conservative legislators in Tennessee and Oklahoma about whether to forgo federal funds tied to mandates around gender identity recognition, but have thus far .

“The White House would face, on each and every one of these proposals, forceful resistance from those in Congress who believe in these programs; from all the advocates of these programs, whom the administration ultimately has to work with; and also the career officials, who understand that the programs are written into law and that changing them is likely infeasible,” he argued.

But some of the most prominent ideas in the Mandate for Leadership could likely be pursued without congressional approval. Most famously, the document recommends reinstating a Trump-era executive order known as Schedule F, which would in policymaking roles. While it would likely take years to identify, reclassify, terminate, and replace all the civil servants that a second Trump administration might like to target, such a reform holds the potential of fundamentally changing the way the Department of Education (among countless other agencies) functions.

Finn, who would agree in principle to an “intelligent voucherization” of federal programs like Title I, said he believed much of the Project 2025 agenda could well be realized with a concerted push. 

“I really think you could do a fair chunk of this in a single term if you had the right stars lined up in Congress. Not many of these things are, on their face, unconstitutional; therefore, if you changed the laws and the regulations, the courts — especially a conservative Supreme Court — would be unlikely to undo the changes.”