Trump-appointed Secretary of Education Linda McMahon visits a charter school in Florida. Credit: Flickr/DepartmentofEd (CC by 2.0)
On March 20, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education. In response, Linda McMahon, Trump’s Secretary of Education, has called for the federal student loan program to be moved to the Small Business Administration and for federal funding for students with disabilities to be moved to Health and Human Services.
In the far-right wish list known as Project 2025, dismantling DOE was a top priority for education. Even before the executive order, Trump fired half of DOE’s staff. The department’s Office for Civil Rights, with its staff cut in half, has reoriented its focus to “discrimination” against white students and opposing all-gender restrooms and transgender athletes (Propublica).
The DOE was created in 1979 by Congress and legally cannot simply be dismantled without Congress taking action; the American Federation of Teachers preemptively filed a lawsuit the day before Trump signed the order, issuing a statement reading simply, “See you in court.” However, the lay-offs and new priorities have already seriously undermined the important work of the department in protecting equal access to public education for all students regardless of race, gender or disability, and are sowing confusion and fear for the many students and college graduates with student loans.
The creation of the DOE was a product of the Civil Rights revolution of the 1970s. Many of the reforms won in these struggles had major implications for education including:
- Ending legalized Jim Crow apartheid in schools (1954 Brown v Board of Education)
- Head Start program (1965, part of the War on Poverty)
- Title IX which addresses gender equality in schools receiving federal funding (1972)
- Individuals with Disabilities Education Act or IDEA (1975)
DOE’s civil rights office has played a major role in enforcing these reforms by investigating and prosecuting violations, giving families and communities an avenue to push back on discriminatory practices.
DOE programs that help working class students
- Title 1: $18.4 billion to help schools with a high percentage of kids living in poverty
- Special education: $14.2 billion to provide education for students with disabilities
- Title 3: Resources for schools to teach English language learner
Dismantling DOE is about rolling back these progressive gains of the Civil Rights era in order to remove any obstacles to the ability of the capitalist class to reap ever-increasing profits. On the billionaire’s agenda is the privatization of education and siphoning off tax-payer dollars to subsidize private school tuition for well-off families.
Only the far right is cheering these developments. Polls show that a majority of Americans oppose dismantling the DOE and understand the devastating impact that the billionaire’s agenda could have on students trying to learn in already underfunded schools.
Now is not the time to fall into despair. The DOE has played an important role in advancing educational equity by bringing the power of the federal government to bear, but it’s not the only one with power on the playing field of education. Teachers’ unions are speaking out and organizing not only teachers but communities to fight for the schools our children deserve.
A socialist vision for education
In a capitalist society, we fight for and win reforms which can then be rolled back in the interests of the bosses. In a socialist society, education from pre-K to graduate school would be a right for all.
Reorganizing the economy to take of human needs, by taking over the richest corporations and slashing the military budget will mean students and teachers arrive healthy, well-rested and well-nourished to school.
Fully funding education will mean that class sizes can be drastically reduced — an intervention that has been proven by research to improve student learning especially for poor and nationally oppressed students. Crumbling school buildings can be renovated or replaced to be clean, safe and beautiful places to learn.
Racist, sexist and anti-LGBTQ school curricula and policies would be replaced with a liberatory pedagogy that inculcates self-determination and mutual respect.
Student debt must be erased while all children and families have access to free, high-quality pre-school and childcare. The basic tenet of IDEA — that all children, with and without disabilities, have a right to a free, appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment — would be the reality.
