Deconstructing the Department: Analyzing the Impact of Trump-Era Education Policy
By Anya Bravin
On March 20th, President Donald Trump signed an executive order which, according to the White House, “empowers parents, states, and communities to improve education outcomes.” But in reality, Trump’s drastic moves to reduce the federal hold on education seem to be doing more harm than good. His goal of completely dismantling the Department of Education, one major campaign plank in last year’s election, has long been speculated upon. For decades, the Department of Education has played a key role in protecting and promoting civil rights, equity, and opportunities for students across all backgrounds. With its dismantling, students lose these resources, and the education system loses the slow progression towards equity and fairness that it had begun to make, aided by the department. From a civil rights perspective, the effects of this change are especially devastating.
For example, just weeks after Trump was sworn into office, the Maine Department of Education faced huge cuts to its funding and became the subject of several federal investigations, all due to their policies on transgender athletes. When an investigation into a state education department results in an outcome that the administration deems unsatisfactory, like in the case of Maine, federal officials threaten to, and occasionally follow through on, promises to cut the education funding of the state. When funding is cut, students lose the services that their state had previously been able to provide to them, including help with disabilities, health, and counseling.
A huge portion of federal education funding goes towards helping students with physical and cognitive learning disabilities. If this funding gets cut, schools will not be able to make the necessary changes (like installing elevators or hiring additional teachers) to assist these students. With the vast reduction of the Office of Civil Rights, there are fewer people who will be able to ensure that laws that entitle students with disabilities to certain privileges are being enforced. And if the government is not able to account for these students who depend on them most, it is going against the entire goal of the Department of Education. An institution established to make school a more equitable experience for all the children this country serves will officially be working towards ensuring that some students can’t even attend an in-person education experience.
When Andrew Johnson created the first Department of Education back in 1867, its sole purpose was to collect information and statistics about the schools of America. Over the years, the department’s responsibilities have grown to include making recommendations about American education necessities, most of which, historically, have suggested improving education for students who are poor, female, non-English speaking, disabled, or of color. Of course, Trump’s changes to the department have greatly diminished efforts to care for these marginalized groups, but the huge cuts to the department staff itself have made it nearly impossible to produce comprehensive surveys on the status of American schools.
The cuts to the Department of Education’s workforce range across all the different areas that the department covers, many of which are now getting less attention due to the budget cuts. One striking example is the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which employed around 100 people at the start of 2025. After Trump’s March 20th executive order, this number plunged down to three. Functioning with only 3% of its original workforce, the NCES can no longer supply the essential research and statistics that it has provided for more than 150 years. This information has helped countless families and educators with understanding America’s schools, and the current state of education. It is not the only agency facing this problem, and if this continues, the flow of information that keeps the country’s schools functioning and improving could be all but completely cut off.
The cuts to the department have already started affecting hundreds of school districts and thousands of students across the nation. Funding for essential programs that provide opportunities to you, your children, grandchildren, or nieces and nephews will continue to decrease. Research into how to make schools more equitable will be stopped, as will the research into how those solutions are working out. To sum it up, America's public schools will be in absolute pandemonium, in a way that will result in worse curricula and less work being done to improve in the future. We, as a nation, must stop this from happening. We must do whatever we can—call our Senators, attend local school board meetings, or unite our communities against Trump’s education-related agenda—to stop this takeover of our schools. We must ensure that our nation can still flourish where it matters most: education.