Is this the end of the Department of Education? | The Excerpt
On Sunday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: Recent moves by President Donald Trump and his administration could signal the beginning of the end for the nearly 50-year-old Department of Education, delivering on a campaign promise to knock out the federal agency and send schooling back to the states. The department distributes billions of dollars to schools each year. It also outlines and enforces educational rights for students with disabilities and collects copious amounts of national data on education, among other things. What impact could the dismantling of ED have on students, families and schools? Paste BN Education Reporter Zach Schermele joins The Excerpt to lay out the downstream impacts.
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Dana Taylor:
Hello, and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Sunday, March 16th, 2025.
Recent moves by President Donald Trump and his administration could signal the beginning of the end for the nearly 50-year-old Department of Education, delivering on a campaign promise to knock out the federal agency and send schooling back to the states. The Department distributes billions of dollars to schools each year. It also outlines and enforces educational rights for students with disabilities and collects copious amounts of national data on education, among other things. What impact could the dismantling of ED have on students, families, and schools?
For more on that, I'm now joined by Paste BN Education reporter, Zach Schermele. Thanks for joining me, Zach.
Zach Schermele:
Thanks so much for having me.
Dana Taylor:
Zach, you wrote that millions of students, parents, teachers, administrators, and support staff may be wondering what does this mean for us? First, tell us about the recent moves and why this could signal the end of the Department.
Zach Schermele:
Well, the Trump administration announced that it was going to be reducing the workforce of the Federal Education Department by about 50%, which is really significant. This is a workforce reduction at the Department which has a hand in overseeing schools across the country and makes policies and distributes funds from Congress that touch the lives, really, of tons of American students and families; really, anybody who has a stake in the education system in this country.
Those workforce reductions are taking the Department's staffing from over 4,000 people to around 2,000 people. The reductions that were announced by the agency essentially said that every division within the Education Department, including the Federal Student Aid Office, which disperses federal financial aid, things like student loans, Pell Grants, other forms of aid that help folks pay for going to college. It is in charge of administering and overseeing the FAFSA, the free application for federal student aid. It was pretty hard hit, a couple of hundred folks were terminated from the Federal Student Aid Office.
Then the Office for Civil Rights, which is the division within the Education Department that ensures that students are not discriminated against. It's one of the only avenues that folks have to try and address discrimination in schools without bringing costly lawsuits against school districts and colleges. That agency within the Education Department saw a couple of hundred terminations as well. And then the Institute of Education Sciences, which is the Education Department's research gathering arm, was just entirely decimated, raising really crucial questions about how we are going to be tracking progress in the nation's schools going forward.
Dana Taylor:
Are there states actively working to block the dismantling of ED, or are they cheering him on? What's going on there?
Zach Schermele:
So a group of Democratic Attorneys General has already filed suit against the Trump administration, trying to block the reductions and workforce that the administration has attempted to move forward with. Like I said, this is an unprecedented workforce reduction at the agency. But what we do know is that the Education Department has really long been a political cudgel for Republicans and Donald Trump. Ever since he launched his campaign for President, he has been adamant about wanting to, quote, "close the Education Department entirely."
It's important to remember that on paper, a President doesn't have the unilateral authority to dismantle or abolish a federal agency, but we've seen the President try and move forward with versions of that anyways.
Dana Taylor:
What happens now, of course, is the big question. Federal funding contributes about 14% to public school budgets across the country; part of the estimated 800 to $900 billion that's spent annually. Will states get that funding directly to dispense as they see fit? What happens to schools if they don't get this money?
Zach Schermele:
So I think that there are a lot of misnomers out there about the role of the federal government in education in this country. So first of all, the federal government doesn't have any control in curriculum in K-12 schools and in schooling in general. But really where the federal government does come in is it tries to ensure that every student in this country can get to school, that they can stay in school, that they can feel safe in school, and that they can ultimately graduate from whatever program that they are intending to finish, with a credential that's valuable, and that they go on to have a successful life.
And so these streams of funding that the Education Department administers are approved by Congress, and so a President can't unilaterally say that those need to go away. Those streams of funding are supposed to continue. They are ostensibly going to continue, according to Linda McMahon, Trump's Education Secretary, who has promised that things like Title I funding, which are funding streams that go to support high-poverty school districts, that funding for federal student loans for Pell Grants which help lower-income students pay for college, that those things aren't going to be disrupted. Funding for students with disabilities is another really key stream of money here.
But a lot of folks in and around the Department, with whom I've spoken just over the last week, really don't see how this agency, which has never been this hamstrung, is going to be able to adequately distribute those funds to schools and to students without a disruption at some point in the near future. What's happening right now is something that's never been done before. So we're just going to have to wait and see the degree to which these promises from Linda McMahon and from the Trump administration are kept, or if there are larger disruptions.
Dana Taylor:
Part of the intended purpose of federal aid is to level the playing field so that children of wealthy parents or guardians aren't the only ones with access to a quality education. Could this change at Ed exacerbate inequalities?
Zach Schermele:
I think that that is a really important question to be asking right now. As I have said before, and I'll say it again, the role of the federal government really is to try and ensure that every student has the ability to get to school, to stay in school, and to finish school. And the important means by which the Federal Education Department tries to pursue that goal include civil rights enforcement, trying to make sure that students with disabilities get funding that they need, and in fact, that they're entitled to by federal law, that students who are being discriminated against on the basis of race or of gender have equal access to educational programs that their peers of other races or genders also have. And we saw more than half a dozen regional civil rights offices around the country that are part of the Education Department just completely shuttered.
And so there are parents already that are trying to mediate civil rights cases, and for one reason or another have found that their child or their students' learning has been disrupted and are trying to get help with resolving those cases, who now don't have attorneys to turn to because those attorneys are looking for other jobs. And so I think that it's going to be hard for those families going forward. And whether or not we have an ability to assess how educational inequities progress is also going to be a challenge, because the entire research arm that tries to go through and put together research on a national basis about schools and about educational progress and achievement is also gone.
Dana Taylor:
How are states preparing for the impending shift in responsibilities here, and what impact could we see on things like school choice and school voucher programs?
Zach Schermele:
I think that how states and school districts and college administrators are reacting to this news is really going to depend specifically on where in the country you are. I think that there are already folks in more Liberal states and more Liberal cities who feel as though they are beefing up the services that they have at their disposal to ensure that students who are not cared for adequately in those communities are going to have the help that they need in order for the playing field to be relatively level.
But I think it's important to remember when we have these types of discussions that part of the reason why the federal government has a role in educational programming is because, by and large, cities and school districts and colleges and states have failed at ensuring that everybody, that every student in this country has an ability to go to school and stay there and graduate with a valuable credential. And so the federal government has tried to ensure that the playing field is level and that opportunity is something that is accessible to everyone.
And so I think that those disruptions are going to continue, and whether or not nonprofits and other forms of assistance organizations can step in to fill that gap in the coming weeks and months, and sensibly years, is an open question.
Dana Taylor:
What about the ban on DEI in schools?
Zach Schermele:
There is a lot of consternation and confusion among school districts and among college administrators right now, especially with respect to that so-called ban on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. There was a letter in the Washington DC parlance. It's a Dear Colleague letter that the Federal Education Department sent out to schools and to administrators saying that they had to implement a sweeping prohibition on diversity, equity, and inclusion programings in all aspects of educational life, from admissions to recruitment to student housing to graduation ceremonies, and the Education Department gave schools and colleges about a two-week deadline to become compliant with that requirement. Which a lot of folks that I spoke with said that was virtually impossible to be compliant with some pretty vague and nebulous rules in such a short period of time.
Then the deadline passed and the Education Department provided some clarification that walked back pretty significantly some of those compliance requirements
Dana Taylor:
Prior to the news of the gutting of the Department of Education, there were already significant barriers for some of the 17 million students who apply for college financial aid. How might the process of securing aid or loans change for the families who need it?
Zach Schermele:
This is a major question for a lot of folks, and I think came up really quickly after these layoffs came down, or the announcement of these layoffs came down. Because the free application for federal student aid, that's the FAFSA that millions of students have to fill out every year in order to get help from the federal government paying for college, it's not entirely clear whether or not student loan disbursement and being able to get access to financial aid is going to be disrupted by students going forward.
McMahon has promised that it won't, but again, it's important to remember that the Federal Student Aid Office has already been pretty hamstrung in terms of its bandwidth for years, and now it's operating with hundreds fewer staffers than it ever has before. So I think that for a lot of folks, it's hard to see how this doesn't result in some delays and problems with the disbursement of federal student aid.
Dana Taylor:
As you've said, ED is also responsible for educational research and the tracking of testing and achievement of both the students and schools. Scores released in January by ED as part of the annual nation's report card show that American students have yet to return to pre-pandemic academic levels. On Wednesday, President Trump defended these steep cuts, saying US schools rank highest in spending per pupil internationally but rank last overall. Is that a correct assessment? What arguments are being made in support of the dismantling of the Department of Education?
Zach Schermele:
I think something that is really important to keep in mind here and that I've tried to iterate over the course of the last week or so, and in fact previously as we have learned more about the Trump administration's plans for the research arm of the Education Department, the arm from which Trump and others are pulling data that they use to continuously criticize the work that the government is doing, is that if these divisions, if these corners of the Education Department where researchers are located and where folks who work with vendors who then conduct research, if the work that they're doing is stopped, which for all intents and purposes there are certain elements of testing of students and schools and research that has to be done that is congressionally mandated, but tracking educational progress going forward in order to test the hypothesis that these cuts that the Trump administration has moved forward with are working, that's going to be a challenge, because the folks who are in charge of engaging in that research are no longer going to be at the Department.
So I think that it's important to keep in mind when the President and others levy these criticisms against the Department about performance and schooling writ large, that regardless of the merits of the claims that they're making, that being able to assess how students are reacting to the changes that are being made at the federal level and how schools are able to ensure that students have equal access to education, that that's just going to be harder going forward.
Dana Taylor:
Zach, thanks so much for being on The Excerpt.
Zach Schermele:
Of course. Thanks for having me.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks to our senior producers, Shannon Rae Greene and Kaely Monahan for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.