Expected policy changes to U.S. public education under the Trump administration will likely involve areas such as universal school choice, critical race theory, transgender ideology, student college debt relief, and higher education accreditation.
In addition, the fate of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) itself hangs in the balance—though dismantling it would require an act of Congress.
The Department of Education was established in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter.
Its scope was to ensure equal educational opportunities, to share research and information with state and local education agencies, to provide additional funds to very low-income schools, and to administer federal grant and loan programs for higher education.
The federal agency cannot mandate curriculum, graduation requirements, or teacher and administrator credentials. Those decisions are made at the state and local levels, where state aid and municipal property taxes fund schools.
More recently, the department has taken on tasks such as awarding special education funding, conducting civil rights investigations, and issuing guidance on technology and artificial intelligence education.
Jonathan Butcher, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy, said that all of those functions could easily be absorbed into other federal agencies, resulting in massive savings for taxpayers.
“Washington is paying an administration to do the work that state departments of education should already be doing,” Butcher told The Epoch Times, adding that federal aid to poor districts amounts to less than 10 percent of per-student allocations.
“Abolishing the U.S. Department of Education provides more authority for states and districts to make decisions for themselves.”
Under the Trump administration, Butcher said he expects the DOE to cut redundant administrative costs, emphasize academic improvement, promote universal school choice nationwide, and empower state and local education administrators to provide better leadership.
“The Department of Education is a massive, influential, visible tool to reach into every school district, to reach into every college and university campus, and exert attention and pressure and other things as to your administration’s policy priorities,” said Jon Fansmith, ACE’s assistant vice president of government relations.
“Why would you give that up if that’s now with your authority?”
Gender Ideology and Critical Race Theory
During a July rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota, former President Donald Trump vowed to cut federal education funds to schools that push critical race theory (CRT), gender ideology, and “other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content” on students.“And I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate,” Trump said. “And I’ll keep men out of women’s sports.”
Its research is based on complaints submitted by parents and on information obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests.
In one recent incident, a California district paid a consultant $530,000 to develop a curriculum around “CRT, whiteness, and social justice activism.” In another, a story-time program in Vermont taught kindergartners how to explore gender identity. And a district in Virginia collaborated with a Chinese organization that wanted to establish schools with U.S. curriculum in the communist country, as part of a “cultural exchange” program.
Most states had at least one instance where a district hid a student’s “gender identity” to comply with President Joe Biden’s executive order amending Title IX, according to PDE’s research.
Michele Exner, director of federal affairs at PDE, said the election results came as no surprise to her considering the number of complaints her organization has received in every state over the past four years.
“Parents are fed up,” she said. “There’s an erosion of parental trust. Schools can’t hide information from parents. We are getting back to merit and meritocracy. Lowering the bar and getting rid of metrics doesn’t help the students.”
Exner does not think Trump will immediately leverage federal funding to force lower-income school districts to eliminate CRT and gender ideology programs.
Instead, the DOE’s Office of Civil Rights, which investigates complaints of discrimination or harassment, will apply pressure on noncompliant schools and remind them they risk losing aid if they don’t take corrective actions.
“It’s a way to dismantle the woke cancer that is affecting education,” Exner said.
In education, support and opposition to CRT and transgender ideology represent a national dichotomy.
Website pages for state education departments in some deep blue states highlight special events such as Transgender Day of Visibility.
In contrast, those in red states like Arizona and Arkansas have disclaimers noting that bias that detracts from academic standards is not tolerated.
“Without commentating on politics, I am encouraged to see a new administration commit to removing the elements of Critical Race Theory and so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion from schools,” Arizona Education Commissioner Tom Horne said in a statement to The Epoch Times.
Expanding School Choice
At the national level, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) plans to push his Educational Choice for Children Act, which would provide income tax credits to individuals or organizations that donate money to private school voucher programs.He said he has Trump’s support and hopes to replace Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) as the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee when Republicans take control of the Senate in January.
Cassidy joined other politicians and education leaders in rallying for school choice during a Nov. 7 event hosted by the Center for Education Reform in Washington.
They said restricting tax dollars to local schools is an outdated idea and funding should instead be allocated according to each family’s choice, whether that’s public, private, or home schooling.
Christopher Marker, chief executive officer of the Freedom Institute of Collier County in Florida, said that while there are many examples of outstanding public schools, too many school leaders and elected officials have dismissed parents instead of embracing them as partners in the education process.
Without more input from parents and universal school choice nationwide, he said, public education will become a trillion-dollar industry “of factory schools with warehouse model inefficiencies.”
“We all love our schools and our school programs, but we don’t love them more than we love our kids,” Marker said.
However, the union also claimed victory with the passing of a referendum in Nebraska to end a taxpayer-funded private school voucher program, as well as the defeat of referendums to codify school choice into the state constitutions in Colorado and Kentucky.
Higher Education
During the Moms for Liberty summit in Philadelphia last year, Trump criticized Biden’s student loan forgiveness program and applauded the Supreme Court for its decision to prohibit affirmative action in college admissions. He also said he would eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs funded by the federal government at institutes of higher education.Ted Mitchell, president of ACE, said the election results ushered in “an anxious moment” for higher education.
“An awful lot of Americans feel higher education is moving American society in the wrong direction,” Mitchell said during the Nov. 6 panel discussion.
Fansmith predicts Trump will use the DOE’s civil rights office to oppose DEI hiring and curriculum programs.
“The critique is that they inherently discriminate against other groups of students,” he said.
Jan Friis, senior vice president for the nonprofit Council of Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), agrees.
CHEA oversees dozens of organizations that set and maintain industry standards in the humanities and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) subjects.
Under the 1965 Higher Education Act, college majors are required to be accredited in order to get federal money for research and other functions.
While CHEA is not federally funded, Friis said, but the U.S. government “accredits the accreditors.”
“Accreditation has been around a lot longer [than college DEI and social justice programs],” Friis told The Epoch Times. “Any threat would be met with a strong reaction from higher education.”
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) notes on its website that it plans to fight the Trump administration from day one.
The organization vows to represent schools that teach CRT and transgender ideology.
“We call on lawmakers, students, parents, educators, and community members to support the fight against these classroom censorship attacks and book challenges. The battle is far from over,” a page on the ACLU website titled Defending Our Right to Learn states.
Exner, from PDE, said parent groups like hers are no strangers to litigation, and they expect a series of lawsuits from the ACLU in the years to come.
However, given Republicans’ success in the 2024 election, she said, supporters of education reform and an objective education for all should be confident that change is coming.
“These are common sense 80/20 issues,” she said. “We are bracing for more friction and resistance, yes, but public sentiment is on our side so it’s an uphill battle for them.”
