The US Senate has received a bill that will fulfill Donald Trump’s ambition of dismantling the federal Department of Education.
The Returning Education to Our States Act was launched on Thursday by South Dakota Republican Senator Mike Rounds. $200 billion in financing and a redistribution of the education department’s responsibilities to other federal agencies and states would result from the bill’s passage.
In a statement announcing the measure, Rounds stated, “It’s long past time to end this bureaucratic department that causes more harm than good. The federal Department of Education has never educated a single student.”
“I’ve been working for years to get the federal Department of Education out,” he continued. The fact that President-elect Trump has this vision makes me happy, and I can’t wait to collaborate with him and the Republican majorities in the House and Senate to see it through to completion. By essentially relocating these federal programs to their own departments, this measure serves as a blueprint for dismantling the federal Department of Education, which will be crucial as we enter the upcoming year.
The Department of Education’s main functions would be transferred to other departments: the Treasury Department would be in charge of administering federal student loans; the Department of Health and Human Services would be in charge of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which provides protections for the 7.5 million students with special needs; and the Department of State would be in charge of the Fulbright-Hays Program.
To pass the soon-to-be Republican-controlled Senate, the bill would need a supermajority of 60 votes. Notably, the Argus Leader claims that Rounds thinks he can carry the bill with 50 votes. Reconciliation, a congressional loophole that permits the passage of tax and spending measures with just a majority, would enable that accomplishment. Despite Rounds’s aspirations, reconciliation appears unlikely because the Senate and White House are still controlled by Democrats and several independents who are against abolishing the department.
When Republicans take over next term, Rounds might reintroduce the idea, but it would still need 60 votes to clear the Senate.
Should the measure pass, education and policy experts have voiced their fears about what else lies ahead in another Trump presidency.
According to David DeMatthews, a professor in the educational leadership and policy department at the University of Texas, he does not believe that the education department “will be abolished ultimately, but I do have a lot of fears.”
According to him, one topic that “really cut[s] across the political divide” is education.
Republicans who supported Trump might have a child with a catastrophic brain injury or disability who is enrolled in a special program that costs the family between $50 and $60,000. They want their child to attend a top-notch program that has undergone state evaluation. If the state is not performing up to par, they seek rights, which are derived from the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, a federal special education legislation that is overseen and implemented by the US Department of Education.
Since Jimmy Carter, the president at the time, started the Department of Education in 1980, the Republican Party has made abolishing the agency a top priority. According to ChalkBeat, Ronald Reagan, Carter’s successor, even ran on a platform of abolishing the newly established department that same year. However, that ambition was dashed when Reagan’s first education secretary, Terrel Bell, wrote a report that “advocated for a strong federal role to ensure students received a high-quality education.”
Depending on the party in power, the department has seen pushes and pulls ever since. The department’s stance has been more progressive during Democratic administrations. One recent instance is the Biden administration’s April release of new Title IX regulations that provided more safeguards for pregnant students, victims of sexual misconduct, and LGBTQ+ students; however, House Republicans stopped the rule in July.
Throughout his campaign, Trump made it clear that closing the Department of Education and “establishing a new credentialing organization that will be the gold standard anywhere in the world to certify teachers who embrace patriotic values support our way of life and understand that their job is not to indoctrinate children” were among his top education priorities.
Additionally, he has promised to reduce federal support for any program or school that teaches “critical race theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content” and to give states back control over educational choice.
Trump declared in a video shortly after winning the 2024 presidential election that “we want states to run the education of our children, because they’ll do a much better job of it” and that the education department was filled by numerous people who “in many cases, hate our children.”
DeMatthews describes Trump’s appointment of former World Wrestling Entertainment executive Linda McMahon as his secretary of education earlier this month as “concerning.” McMahon will be responsible for overseeing the department that Trump has pledged to shut down.
In order to support children with disabilities, low-income families, and English language learners, DeMatthews stated, “We’re already seeing people in the Trump administration and some Republicans really trying to walk back some basic civil rights victories that happened in the 1960s and 1970s.”
“I believe that the public wouldn’t be against removing assistance for some of the most underprivileged kids in our nation if they were aware of it and understood it.”