GOP Calls to Abolish the Department of Education, Explained

The department has been controversial since its inception, but it’s difficult to eliminate a Cabinet department.

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The Department of Education building in Washington, D.C., on May 2, 2022. (Photo by STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)

In a campaign video released last week, former President Donald Trump said that if reelected he would close the Department of Education and “end education coming out of Washington, D.C.” He’s not the only one: Four other Republican presidential candidates promised the same during the first GOP debate last month, and Vivek Ramaswamy even proposed that he could do so unilaterally.

But what would that mean practically?

What does the department do?

The Department of Education has a few main functions, including: handle federal financial aid, conduct and disseminate research, and prevent discrimination. With 4,400 employees, it is the smallest Cabinet-level department.

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  1. ErrantThoughts

    The real reason is probably closer to the Christian nationalists see the DoE as an obstacle for getting Jesus and their imagined Christian values into taxpayer funded public schools.

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  2. Brett F.

    Trump plans to replace the Department of Education with the Department of Ignorance.

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    Rdpulfer

    While I agree students could be encouraged to try community colleges instead of seeking federal aid for overpriced schools, I worry any move to limit Pell Grant could used to appeal to the rising anti-intellectualism that views college as largely unnecessary. Lower income students would be forced to take blue collar jobs (which, granted, are still important) leaving college exclusively for those who can afford it.

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    Earl King

    I believe the only thing the Federal Government should do is pay for research, dissemination of “best practices” . Dept. of Ed under the urging of Laura Bush, the Bush Administration developed good research for how kids learn to read. It was mostly ignored as “whole learning” came was blindly pushed.....The Free Press did a a great series on why our 4th graders cannot read. the history of school books with lemming like behavior of school districts playing the bad guys.

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  5. Jack H Wolf

    Eliminating the department seems more symbolic than real unless specific programs are eliminated then it is just moving furniture.
    There are 21 cabinet positions and many could be eliminated, small business administration eg and others, but it just amounts to shuffling programs around without changing anything.
    I do favor ending federal support for student loans, beyond those positions that the country is short supplied in eg teachers, nurses. But why support sports marketing majors get loans, is beyond me and we should let banks make loans based on risk That might eliminate schools with low graduation rates and discourage useless majors as well as forcing students to use much cheaper community colleges to cull out those who wont graduate, which is an amazing 50%.
    As to Pell Grants- needy students should access community colleges for two years and only those with a likelihood of graduating should get Pell Grants. Granting money to the 50% of students who never graduate is a throwaway.

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    Charley Warns

    $108.3 billion is its current budget! It takes someone like DOCTOR Jill Biden to see any value in this department beyond its value as a slush fund (a la Joe Biden's "stimulus" package). If you eliminated the below (among the rest), do you think anyone would notice beyond those actually getting the money?

    "The Department of Education also funds research on subjects such as literacy, education leadership, and cognition to “learn about what’s going on at a national scale,” Meyer says."

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    Rjosephpaquette

    Simple question. Why does it need to be a separate department with a full cabinet member? Simply assign its current duties and most of the employees to HHS and make the head an undersecretary?

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    1. ErrantThoughts

      Because education is a critical national priority.

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        Rjosephpaquette

        True. But that doesn’t mean the federal government should be in charge of it. In fact, I believe the opposite. One size fits all is unhelpful in education.

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    Marc Frischhertz

    I wonder if parts of the GOP that want to abolish departments of the federal government realize how much money flows to “red” states through many of the departments they want to abolish.

    In fact, looking at the states that are net recipients of federal dollars (the states some would call welfare states or takers) most of them are very republican. I have always viewed the Republican position on the federal government as a paradox. Republicans claim as a principle that they want smaller federal government. Well, the size of the federal government is defined by the amount of money it spends.

    If small government conservatives were to instantly get what they claim to want, would they immediately regret it? What would happen if every “red” state suddenly stopped receiving billions in federal money through the department of education and other federal agencies?

    12 of the top 15 states that receive the most net federal aid are solidly republican. I would call the people voting in these states hypocrites, but I honestly think they don’t know they are dependent on the federal government.

    The hypocrites are the republican politicians in these states. They campaign on shrinking the federal government, but failed to mention, and educate their voters on the true ramifications of enacting their policies. And no one calls them on their bullshit.

    How refreshing would it be for Senator Tom cotton to be asked, “senator, you think the size of the federal government should be shrunk? Then, why don’t you start at the source of the problem and advocate, for Arkansas to become self-sufficient?”

    Stated another way if your political philosophy is absolutely not sustainable, can it be legitimate? Most of these red state takers of federal money have low or zero state income taxes. The Republican elected officials in the states use this to claim that they are for small government. However, this is only sustainable and accepted by their voters because federal money is used to supplement the lack of state money. Does this not make their entire political philosophy a lie?

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      Kmregan7

      They know..they just think they’re more worthy than “those” people (whoever they might be) to get that money..

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      Charley Warns

      The thing is that Florida is #1 in Education. Read it for yourself: (https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education).
      Yet Florida ranks near the top in efficiency. Read it for yourself: (https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statistics).

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        Marc Frischhertz

        My comment has nothing to do with the ranking of the public school system in any given state.

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        Kmregan7

        And New Jersey is 2 and Massachusetts is 3…..

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      Erik.Kravets

      Seems like Democrats are eager to push federally funded programs down Republicans' throats but Republicans aren't interested?

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        Marc Frischhertz

        I don’t know about that. Several “conservatives” want photos and credit for infrastructure bill projects and red states spend every dollar the feds send. Seems like they act just like democrats while claiming to be different

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    PB3

    Policy proposals like DOEd elimination/abrogation—realistic or not—are why I still reject the "centrist" label for "conservative," Trump's* epochal malignancy notwithstanding. In an ideal world, of course we should abolish the Department of Education, and not just because it's facially unconstitutional.

    I say this as the graduate of a college and law school with ~80% and ~20% acceptance rates, respectively: Pell Grants (plus Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424 (1971)**) artificially prop up the façade that higher education is much more than a waste of time and money for the vast majority of Americans. Sadly, modern colleges have much more to do with their cultural accreditions than their actual educations.

    An average vocation-school graduate makes as much—if not more than—an average college graduate in his or her adulthood. But politics are downstream from culture, so this particular fight starts with stripping the bark off of the cultural prestige we collectively attach to higher education. Harumph!

    * He's populist, not conservative.
    ** Most modern corporations are constitutionally forbidden from administering in-house aptitude tests for employment because they improperly (and shamefully) administered them discriminatorily in the 1960s; they've farmed those assessments out to colleges and graduate schools ever since.

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    Ben Connelly

    My only question is “Why stop at Education?”

    This proposal warms the coddles of my cold, free-market fundamentalist heart.

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