The Strings Attached: How Trump's Executive Orders Are Cutting Federal Ties on Our Schools
Education is, in many ways, the bedrock of our communities. In the United States, it has been a reflection of our values and cultural identity, and the Founding Fathers themselves envisioned a system in which states and localities handle education, free from government overreach that could dilute moral teachings and relevant curricula. Now that a year has passed since the beginning of this most recent Trump administration, it may be time to reflect on the White House’s dramatic shift in approach to education. In March and April of last year, the Trump administration released a number of Executives Orders aimed at reimagining federal oversight of our public schools. The first one, titled, “Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities,” claims to take a bold step towards dismantling what the administration calls a bloated bureaucracy that has turned schools into experiments in progressive ideology, with the intent to restore power to those who know our children best: parents, teachers, and neighbors.
To understand the significance of such claims, we need to look at the history of federal education regulation in the United States. Education was primarily a state and local affair until the mid-20th century, at which point the federal government became much more involved through laws like the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, a part of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society that aimed to address poverty through funding–and therefore opened the door to more federal oversight. The biggest shift came in 1979, when President Carter, backed by teachers' unions, created the Department of Education as a standalone cabinet agency. Since then, federal involvement has ballooned, with programs like No Child Left Behind and Common Core standards imposing national testing and curricula guidelines. Today, the federal government provides about 8-10% of K-12 funding, and wields tremendous influence by the strings attached to that money, regulating everything from civil rights compliance to special education and Title IX.
Federal oversight sometimes translates, for teachers, to mountains of paperwork, standardized testing mandates, and top-down policies that stifle local innovation. At its worst, such control causes teachers to get bogged down in compliance with ever-changing federal rules and agendas. Reducing it could therefore mean more flexibility to tailor lessons, ultimately allowing teachers to do what they do best: inspire and educate without a federal bureaucracy looking over their shoulder.
Is closing the Department of Education an attempt to reclaim the soul of American learning, or simply a cost-cutting measure? Would our children thrive with more local oversight, or would a lack of federal standards and programs create an uneven educational landscape for them?
The Executive Order in question focused on one, very large goal: to close the Department of Education entirely, ostensibly to shift authority back to states and communities. The justification for this, as articulated in the Order, stems from a criticism of federal bureaucracy as a failed experiment, citing: dismal student performance (for example, 70% of 8th graders are below proficient in reading), massive spending ($200 billion during COVID, plus $60 billion annually), and inefficiencies, like managing a $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio with inadequate staff. The central remedy to this criticism is not only the closure of the Department of Education, but also the enforcement of compliance with laws against discrimination, which the Trump administration claims is occurring under the radar through DEI labels or gender ideology programs. In order to be functional, the Order’s provisions ultimately must align with existing laws without creating new, enforceable rights. All of this is purportedly designed to empower families on a local level and relinquish the relatively limited authority that the federal government currently has over our children’s educational future.
More specifically, the Executive Order directed the department's secretary to dismantle the agency to the maximum extent permitted by law. But significant constraints limit this kind of executive action. Essential functions and funding streams for the Department of Education are established by statutes that were enacted and signed into law by prior Congresses and presidents. In May of last year, a U.S. District Court in Boston issued a preliminary injunction blocking the planned layoffs and related dismantling efforts. The Trump administration appealed, but a federal appeals court declined to lift the injunction later in June. Ultimately, in July, the Supreme Court overturned the lower courts' rulings in a 6-3 decision, lifting the injunction and allowing the workforce reductions and other restructuring measures to proceed.