Above photo: Public high school in the US. Wikimedia Commons.
What does Trump’s latest executive order mean for students and educators, already overburdened by an unequal, underfunded public education system?
On March 20, US President Trump signed an executive order to begin the process of dismantling the Department of Education. The order aims to move education funding from the federal government to the states, and coincides with the plan outlined in Project 2025 by the right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation, which set eliminating the DOE as a goal. The DOE, which, among other objectives, plays a key role in providing funding for impoverished and low income students, students with disabilities, and other underserved students, has been a target of conservatives in the US for decades.
“Closing the Department of Education would provide children and their families the opportunity to escape a system that is failing them,” reads Trump’s executive order, titled “Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities”.
The Trump administration claims that the executive order would not impact federal student loans, special education funding, or funding programs aimed at low income students. But with the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) decimated by mass layoffs, the main agency responsible for determining eligibility for said funding is left completely gutted—leaving the fate of the nation’s most vulnerable public school students unclear.
The Real Crisis In Public Education
Indeed, many who work most closely with students in the US say there is a crisis in the public education system. There is a nationwide teacher shortage, with half of public school leaders feeling as though their schools are understaffed—with low compensation being one of the largest factors in the shortage. Research indicates that as overall inequality grows in the US, the public education system fails to level the playing field and instead reflects the high inequality within the country—with large academic performance gaps persisting between children of lower versus higher socioeconomic status.
“Every day education workers sacrifice to support and teach our students, in a system that has been set up to fail by a lack of funding and gross inequalities,” said Amrita Dani, who has worked as a teacher in Boston public schools for over a decade. “Our students are taught the ‘American dream’ that they can be successful if they work hard at school and in their career, but the reality is that the whole system is designed to maintain the power and wealth of a small group of billionaires, at the expense and on the backs of everyone else.”
Dismantling the Department of Education will make inequalities worse, not better, according to educators and education policy researchers. According to Dani, the recent executive order is “an attack on public education and the victories of the movements for people’s rights.”
“Ultimately, the Department of Education’s main functions can, and should, be returned to the States,” states Trump’s executive order. Yet while Trump proclaims that state management will solve the crisis in public education, research shows that one of the primary problems, inequality, is made worse when funding is primarily left to states and local districts. A 2022 Economic Policy Institute report revealed how education funding “relies too heavily on state and local resources (particularly property tax revenues),” which vary widely based on the relative wealth of a given area. “The federal government plays a small and an insufficient role,” the report found, and “funding levels vary widely across states; and high-poverty districts get less funding per student than low-poverty districts.”
What Will Change With Trump’s Order?
While Trump claims that the policy will “begin eliminating the federal Department of Education once and for all,” the department can only be dismantled without the approval of Congress. The executive order is expected to precipitate another legal battle as Trump seems to have instructed his Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to do something she has no legal authority to do.
What, if anything, would Trump’s executive order actually result in for the education of the almost 50 million students enrolled in the country’s public schools? The fallout from the policy seems unclear.
The White House claims that the department would continue to provide critical services, which are required by law, including the USD 1.6 trillion federal student loan program, special education funding, Pell Grants which provide funds for undergraduate students with financial need, and funding for particularly impoverished school districts through Title I and the Rural Education Achievement Program (REAP).
However, despite the White House’s promises, even before the March 20 executive order, Trump had decimated the staff of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) through mass layoffs. This poses a problem for the nation’s public school students who rely on DOE fundings, as the NCES is responsible for determining which schools qualify for federal funding such as Title I and REAP. The NCES also compiles research on the education system in the US.
“It’s not just that loss of information, it’s what will happen to a school district’s budget in the absence of funds that can’t be allocated without the necessary staff at NCES,” Matthew Gardner Kelly, who studies public school funding at the University of Washington, told NPR.
The staff of NCES, which has existed since 1867, stood at over 100 at the beginning of 2025. On March 21, all but three employees will be placed on administrative leave.
Polls Show Dismantling DOE Is Broadly Unpopular
Trump told reporters upon signing the order that “returning education back to the states” was “a very popular thing to do, but much more importantly, a common sense thing to do.”
The reality is that dismantling the Department of Education is very unpopular among the people of the US. A 2025 Data for Progress poll found that a majority of voters opposed executive action to abolish the DOE, with a plurality of those polled, 48%, strongly opposing such an action. In an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll from late February, 63% of those polled opposed getting rid of the department.
But regardless of the will of the people of the US, “The ultimate goal of the right wing billionaire agenda, of which dismantling the DOE is the first step, is to dismantle the public education system as we know it, and replace it with increased privatization and inequality,” according to Amrita Dani. “Project 2025 has also named teachers unions as a particular target. These attacks on education will hurt our students, the labor movement, and all working class families.”