The White House is gearing up to drop an executive order aimed at scrapping the Department of Education, according to a new report by NBC News.
This move comes on the heels of years of campaign pledges from Trump to wipe out the federal Education Department, a fixture since 1979 when it was launched under President Jimmy Carter. If you remember back in September 2023, Donald Trump shared a video on social media declaring, “One other thing I’ll be doing very early in the administration is closing up the Department of Education in Washington D.C., and sending all education and education work and needs back to the states.”
“In total American society pours more than $1 trillion a year into public education systems but instead of being at the top of the list, we are literally right smack — guess what — at the bottom,” Trump said earlier in the video.
Trump’s proposal made its way into the Republican Party platform last summer, and it’s a concept that Project 2025 has been advocating for too.
The Department of Education claims its K-12 programs are reaching over 50 million students across roughly 98,000 public schools and 32,000 private institutions. Plus, they’re dishing out grants, loans, and work-study support to more than 12 million college students, according to their own figures.
Becky Pringle, the president of the National Education Association, which is a significant labor organization, issued a strong warning in a statement on Tuesday. She emphasized that Trump’s upcoming order would have a detrimental impact on students and families, particularly those from vulnerable communities.
“If it became a reality, Trump’s power grab would steal resources for our most vulnerable students, explode class sizes, cut job training programs, make higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle class families, take away special education services for students with disabilities, and gut student civil rights protections,” she said. “Americans did not vote for, and do not support, ending the federal government’s commitment to ensuring equal educational opportunities for every child.”
Republican backing for getting rid of the Department of Education has been around since it kicked off, with President Ronald Reagan being one of its earliest champions for dismantling it. But despite the chatter, Congress hasn’t managed to push through any legislation to make it happen.
Last month, Reps. Thomas Massie from Kentucky and David Rouzer from North Carolina dropped some bills aimed at axing the department. Massie’s bill has picked up 27 co-sponsors, all from the Republican side. Meanwhile, Sen. Mike Rounds from South Dakota introduced a similar proposal in the last Congress and is expected to roll out another one this time around.
Even though Republicans have control of both the House and Senate, any serious attempt to scrap the department would run into some big hurdles in the upper chamber. They need 60 votes to break a filibuster and move to a final vote. With their slim majority, they would need some Democratic backing to get that done, making it pretty unlikely for such a bill to make it through.
