Last week, President Donald Trump instructed U.S. Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin the process of closing her agency. The order came as no surprise, as shuttering the DOE has long been a priority for Trump and his MAGA supporters.
But Trump’s order, and his pledge to return education “back to the states, where it belongs,” is not self-executing. The DOE was created by Congress in 1979, during the Carter administration, and the agency cannot be closed without approval from Congress. Trump knows that, and he is hoping that Democrats will join Republicans in supporting the department’s elimination.
That said, Trump is not waiting for Congress to act. He started the dismantling process almost as soon as he reentered the White House. During his first 50 days in office, the Trump administration slashed DOE’s workforce by more than half and eliminated $600 million in grants.
Those staff reductions hobbled the DOE’s Office for Civil Rights, which enforces the guarantee that all students — regardless of race, gender, disability or religion — have an equal opportunity to an education. The cuts will also heavily impact vulnerable students, including Title I funding for students living in areas of high poverty, special needs resources and the distribution of Pell grants to support college education for those in need.
We expect challenges to Trump’s DOE order to be similar to other, thus-far successful federal court challenges on issues relating to immigration, deportation and several DOGE-initiated personnel cuts, funding directives and similar actions. Those challenges will argue that unilateral efforts by the administration to dismantle a federal department without congressional support violates the separation of powers clause of the Constitution, ignores the president’s responsibility to carry out federal laws faithfully and oversteps executive branch authority to interpret laws that are supposed to be implemented by federal agencies.
We are in for a long court battle. But in the interim what can we expect?
The argument that dismantling the DOE would return “control” of educational programming to local authorities and reduce federal overreach overlooks the necessary balance between national standards and local implementation. While local control will help address community-specific needs, federal involvement and oversight helps ensure that there is a consistent baseline of quality and educational equity across all states.
And while there is no question that the present DOE construct needs improvement — particularly in the K-12 program areas of literacy and academic performance — it isn’t at all clear that the agency needs to be shut down for those failures. Rather, necessary refinements can be pursued as part of a thoughtful restructuring of the DOE. Moreover, at the higher education levels, where the DOE sets accountability standards, manages accreditation processes and is supposed to ensure that colleges and universities meet specific criteria to receive federal funding, the continued involvement of the federal agency remains important.
In the short term, we encourage Secretary McMahon to develop streamlined operations, increased transparency and meaningful collaboration with state and local entities. Such an approach could help preserve the benefits of federal oversight, standards and policies with appropriate sensitivity to the crucial need of enhanced services for our children.
