The Department of Education Dismantled: What’s Next?

I didn’t think he would pull it off, but here we are. By executive order on March 20, 2025, President Donald Trump ordered his staff to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education.” Of course, there are some caveats. Parts of the department cannot be entirely abolished without congressional approval, which Trump’s executive order acknowledged when he ordered the department to be shut down “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.” Still, with the swiftness of a wrecking ball, this bold move returns control of educational policy and administration back to the states—something many of us, including myself, have longed for.

Cue the Meltdown

The push for radical sex education requirements, Common Core compliance, and national science standards just hit a brick wall. If this executive order holds, the proponents of these programs will have no federal enforcement mechanism left to push these standards and requirements into every classroom in America. For now, conservative values of limited federal government and local oversight of our public schools are winning.

I recently wrote about the Department of Education’s history and shared my predictions to counter the fear-mongering from the legacy media. As expected, they’re in full meltdown mode. Pundits are screaming that free school lunches are gone and accusing conservatives of wanting kids to starve. Social media is flooded with teary-eyed moms claiming their special needs children will no longer receive services. False prophets are crying in the streets, warning that the end of Pell Grants is at hand, and this will block black Americans from attending college.

But just like I said in my previous article, it’s not that serious.

The executive order confirms what many of us predicted, essential services aren’t being eliminated but moved to more appropriate agencies. What’s actually being cut is the waste, millions in salaries, ideological programs, and bloated bureaucracy. According to the department’s 2024 Budget Summary, administrative costs (including wages and operations) run over $2.75 billion annually, supporting around 4,000 employees. Much of that is being trimmed or eliminated—music to my ears.

Programs like federal student loans and Pell Grants are being reassigned to the Small Business Administration, which already manages large-scale loan operations. School nutrition programs will now fall under the USDA, where most food-related federal programs already live. Special education services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) are being transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services. The Department of Justice (DOF) will handle civil rights enforcement in education. Legal accountability for civil rights violations in education could be more easily enforced by the DOJ.

Teachers Unions Fight Back

However, the fact that these essential services remain in effect, the basis for their arguments against Trump’s executive order, doesn’t matter to the Left. The teachers unions are predictably outraged. Just months ago, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), said that “members don’t really care about whether they have a bureaucracy at the Department of Education or not.” However, now that federal funding streams and centralized power are on the chopping block, she quickly contradicted herself, accusing the administration of trying to “defund education” and stating in an official press release that dismantling the department is “throwing federal education programs into chaos across the country.”

The National Education Association (NEA) also voiced strong opposition. NEA President Becky Pringle claimed that dismantling the Department of Education would result in “sending class sizes soaring, cutting job training programs, making higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle-class families, taking away special education services for students with disabilities, and gutting student civil rights protections.” The NEA, AFT, and organizations like the NAACP are filing lawsuits claiming that the dismantling the Education Department violates the Constitution and dangerously reverses years of federal educational policy.

All their arguments are baseless, as we have seen. What they are mad about is the dismantling of federal power to push their radical ideology onto every state in the country and the bloated bureaucratic jobs program the ED has become. But they can’t say that. Instead, they hide behind fearmongering arguments.

Endgame

Regrettably, like many of Trump’s recent executive orders, a left-leaning judge will most likely reverse or block this order, eventually requiring a higher court and probably eventually the Supreme Court to affirm Trump’s executive order. In addition, we will need Congress to dismantle the remaining parts of the Education Department—a more lengthy and challenging process, to be sure. Trump has done his part. While he cannot technically abolish the department single-handedly, he can make its existence functionally unnecessary, giving Congress no excuse but to finish the job.

Even if Trump’s executive order doesn’t hold up in court, and Congress chooses not to end the department by law, there’s a real conversation happening now about what education governance should look like in a free country, and that’s a big first step. Should 4,000 unelected federal employees in DC decide what your kids are taught, or should those decisions be made by your school board, your community, and your state?