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By Tom Norton
Fact Check Reporter
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President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order that would direct the dismantling of the Department of Education (DOE). Trump had been pursuing the closure throughout his 2024 campaign, and it was among a list of policy recommendations in Project 2025.
The order instructs Education Secretary Linda McMahon to take all steps to facilitate the closure of the department while continuing to deliver services.
The DOE manages $1.6 trillion in federal student loans and billions in funding for school programs, including school meals, support for homeless students, and civil rights enforcement, accounting for about 14 percent of public school budgets.
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While education is largely managed and funded at the state level, closing the department may have profound effects on the teaching and performance of students across the country. Ahead of Trump's expected announcement, Newsweek asked experts and leaders in K12 education to explain some of their biggest concerns.
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Funding For Disadvantaged And Disabled Students
Among its most significant duties, the DOE distributes funding for marginalized and disadvantaged students through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), as amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).
As published by the Congressional Research Service in 2024, Congress appropriated $29 billion in Fiscal Year 2023 for students and schools encompassed by the Act, which include children in poverty, migratory students, neglected and delinquent students, programs to support English learning, and programs to support rural education, among other efforts.
As reported by the National Education Association, it's estimated that 26 million children living in poverty receive support under Title 1 of the ESEA/ESSA.
The DOE also distributes and administers funding under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which provides support for 7.5 million students nationwide.
Educators and school leaders have been able to rely on the DOE to help ensure that funding is delivered appropriately. Without the department or a significantly restructured one, there are fears that those payments will not be administered.
Zeph Capo, a public school science teacher and president of the Texas American Federation of Teachers, told Newsweek that without the department's enforcement, specialized funding could end up elsewhere.
"There's not been a year that either myself personally or any of my leaders in school districts across the state have not had to fight and advocate to make sure that the resources intended for special ed kids work weren't diverted to other programs," Capo said.
"For example, funding that paid for teachers' assistants that are directly supposed to work with special education students may easily be moved to do bus duty or lunch duty or some other administrative duty that schools may not want to do, or administrators may not want to do.
"If you don't have that level of enforcement ability then what good is the law to actually support the students it was intended."
The DOE's backstop enforcement is not theoretical. In one example from 2018, it carried out a 15-month investigation that found the Texas Education Agency (TEA) had violated federal law which ensured free, appropriate public education to students with disabilities, as reported by the Associated Press.
It found that despite every student eligible for special education being guaranteed the right to proper public education, Texas officials had capped the number of students who could receive it, limiting enrolment to 8.5 percent.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott immediately ordered an overhaul of the local special education system and gave the TEA a week to make a draft corrective plan.
As Capo told Newsweek, if specialized funding is used elsewhere, it may leave educators with the responsibility of providing specialist teaching in addition to their existing duties and without specific training.
"For example, some of the resources that teachers have depended on—we have a lot of students in Texas that in particular that are bilingual students or their first language is not English," Capo said. "Not all of our teachers, particularly those that aren't certified, have experience in how to instruct those students in a way that they can absorb the content that they're trying to teach, and so the federal government puts out a lot of resources in these different areas.
"I was just at a national conference, the National Association of Bilingual Educators, where teachers there were basically seeing that the resources were being taken down that had been previously provided to them. If the intent is to not provide those resources, then we're going to have a significant number of students and teachers that are going to have to find resources on their own to meet kids' needs.
"The President or the government may sign executive orders saying English is our only language, but on a practical sense on the ground in one of our districts here in Texas, in Houston, there are more than 70-some-odd languages spoken in one particular high school.
"So we have to have supports to be able to address who we have in our classrooms, regardless of what an executive order is, and that's how dismantling the Department of Education [that helps streamline some of these resources] can dramatically impact performance at the state level for certain groups of kids."
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Okhee Lee, a professor in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University, told Newsweek that without the backstop and support provided by the DOE, standards of education for students supported by the department may also widen.
"Possibly the education gaps among states that have resources and those that don't are going to widen," Lee said.
"I expect to see gaps in red and blue states and even within school districts. Those school districts that do not have the resources are going to be left out."
Although the department may be instructed to continue distributing and administering funding under the ESEA/ESSA or IDEA, planned reductions in its workforce that began this month are likely to make that job more difficult.
Newsweek has contacted spokespeople for the Department of Education and the White House via email for comment.
Monitoring National, State Education Performance
Justifying the DOE's closure, Trump has inaccurately claimed that U.S. attainment standards are a global bottom and views the abolition of the DOE as a route to improve grades and performance across the country.
While the DOE does not set curricula, state education standards or implement testing, it conducts supplementary assessments under the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which assesses national and state education performance.
Multiple media reports of the recent staff cut plans at the DOE state that only a handful of employees at the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers NAEP, would remain in post.
Lee told Newsweek that NAEP assessments helped to inform funding decisions and scrutinize education systems that had previously been absent.
"Every state had their own standards, they had their own assessment, and so we had no information about how students were performing, particularly those underserved groups," Lee said. "So the intent is to make the information available, and based on the assessment results give additional funding for students who are underperforming and also hold the education system accountable. And if we don't have the mechanism, then we are going back to no information available."
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What Happens Next
Dismantling the DOE still requires congressional approval. This may be a struggle, as a 2023 House vote on an amendment to abolish the DOE failed, opposed by 60 Republicans, and with a 53-47 Senate majority, the GOP may not have the 60 votes to avoid a filibuster.
Education Secretary and former WWE boss Linda McMahon has been supportive of Trump's aims, saying her vision is "aligned with the president," referring to the "elimination of bureaucracy" as a "final mission."
"This is our opportunity to perform one final, unforgettable public service to future generations of students," McMahon wrote in a statement this month.
Recently announcing workforce reduction plans, amounting to 50 percent of the department's staff, McMahon said the move would restore "greatness" to U.S. education.
In response, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten said that a "gutted department would mean fewer teachers, more crowded classrooms and increased mental health and behavioral challenges for students."
"We'd most likely see increased absenteeism and decreased graduation rates," she said. "Fewer students would be able to obtain the degrees or credentials they need for well-paying jobs, meaning more students would have to settle for low-wage work or simply drop out of the workforce.
"And many cities and states would have to increase school budgets to make up for these cuts, resulting in higher state and local taxes. Instead, this move sends a clear message that, in Trump's America, only kids from wealthy families are entitled to opportunity. How does that help make America great?"
Update 3/28/25 10:30 a.m. ET: A quote was updated for clarity.
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