WSJ What’s News - Trump Wants to Abolish the Education Department. What Comes Next?

Episode Date: February 16, 2025

President Trump has repeatedly said he wants to eliminate the federal Department of Education. Last week his nominee to lead the department, Linda McMahon, was grilled by senators about the plan at her confirmation hearing. WSJ education reporter Matt Barnum and national political reporter Ken Thomas discuss how Trump might follow through on his plan, the legal and political hurdles it could face, and what the impact would be on states and schools. Alex Ossola hosts. Further Reading:  New Restraints at Education Department Jam Civil Rights Enforcement  Trump Wants to End the Education Department. Here’s What That Means.  Trump Advisers Weigh Plan to Dismantle Education Department  Trump Says Musk’s DOGE Will Investigate Education Department, Pentagon  American Kids Are Getting Even Worse at Reading, Test Scores Show  Linda McMahon: Education Department Can’t Shut Down Without Congress  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hey, What's News listeners. It's Sunday, February 16th. I'm Alex Osala for The Wall Street Journal. This is What's News Sunday, the show where we tackle the big questions about the biggest stories in the news by reaching out to our colleagues across the newsroom to help explain what's happening in our world. This week, President Trump wants to close the Education Department. Can he succeed?

And what would happen if he did? The Federal Department of Education was established in 1980, and pretty much since then, conservatives have wanted to get rid of it. President Trump has run with the idea, both as a candidate and since returning to the White House. A reporter asked him about it in the Oval Office just this past week. How soon do you want the Department of Education to be closed? Oh, I'd like it to be closed immediately. Look, the Department of Education's a big con job.

A move like this one might not be so simple to pull off. To talk about it, I'm joined by national political reporter Ken Thomas and education reporter Matt Barnum. Ken, I want to start us off with something really basic. What does the federal education department actually do? Yeah, the department has a long history. Its main functions are to work with student aid programs. It also serves to implement Title I funding, which serves low-income students. It's also involved in working with funding for disabled students,

as well as they have a civil rights division that oversees cases of discrimination in schools. And so, while we have had a history in this country of local control and education, much of the curriculum really is a function of local communities and states, there was this view that there was still a need for a department that would help oversee some of these various programs. Can you quickly just break down the debate over eliminating the department? What are the arguments for and against it? — Conservatives and Trump have talked about the Department of Education as bureaucracy run amok

and a group of bureaucrats who infringe upon the values of some of their voters. And so they want a lot of these functions to be sent back to the states, in many cases in the form of block grants. The fear, if that were to happen, is that a lot of these functions may not be carried out. If your Title I funding maybe provides after-school programs or tutoring, or maybe it helps higher teachers to reduce class sizes in impoverished communities that maybe those block grants wouldn't serve those purposes

or would be diverted into other needs and that there wouldn't be the oversight to ensure that those students get those resources. Matt, I wanna go to you next because that Title I funding is something that came up in Project 2025. That's the big conservative policy book that got a lot of attention during the campaign. President Trump backed away from it a bit, though some of the people who

contributed to it are now being picked for roles in his administration. How does that fit in here? Matthew 2.00 Project 2025 has called for phasing out Title I funding over a period of time, so that could mean cuts for high-poverty schools. Now, they argue that Title I isn't effective. Some supporters of the program say that it is effective. There's also some who would say that the federal government's role has been drastically overstated by critics in the administration and other conservatives, that the federal government isn't the big boogeyman that they say it is. Okay, I'm hearing that funding is a big part of what the Education Department does.

How do concerns about standards and curriculum come into play? Funding is a very key role, but over the years, rules have attached to that funding. And there are certain rules that say the states have to have accountability systems to monitor their low-performing schools if they want to get the Title I money, which all states do. The Individuals with Disability Education Act, which has to do with students with disabilities, has rules about serving students with disabilities. And even some local school officials who would not be fans of cutting federal funding would

say that the bureaucratic rules and paperwork that come with that funding can be too much. I want to bring in some data here. So in fiscal year 2024, the federal government committed $224 billion to the Department of Education, which is about 2% of its overall budget. That's, according to data we pulled from usaspending.gov, which is a government website that tracks government spending. The Trump administration, and in particular the Department of Government Efficiency under Elon Musk, has been very focused on cutting government spending. So have the cost cutters looked at the Education

Department yet? Doge tweeted out that they had canceled 89 contracts at the research arm at the Department of Education, contracts that were worth about $900 million. Now it's not clear that all that will be saved because some of those contracts were ongoing for work that has already been done that they would still have to pay out. But it shows that they are aggressively cutting aspects of the federal government and the Department of Ed where they can. We're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, what will it take to get rid of the Education Department, both politically and legally?

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Congress would have to play a role, right Ken? You know, there have been many attempts to eliminate the Department of Education before and they've all failed. And part of the problem is for Republicans right now is that even if they want to eliminate it, they're going to need to come up with the votes in the Senate, for example. They control 53 votes. They would need to get 60 votes under the current Senate rules to eliminate the department. So that would require that they would get some significant Democratic support. It's

not clear that that is out there right now. Most people expect that would be a very difficult lift. I think there's also just a political issue here where a lot of this money for Title I or for funding for students with disabilities, they often serve rural poor districts that in many cases are Republican areas. So as a result, these programs have had bipartisan support over the years. Any attempt to potentially change the way this money is moved to states and to schools will certainly have a lot of concerns among both Republicans and Democrats. Danielle Pletka Matt, do people actually want the Education

Department to go away? Matthew Feeney Abolishing the Department of Ed is a really galvanizing promise, but it's also galvanizing for critics. And we've seen a counter reaction to the idea of abolishing the Department of Education. The Wall Street Journal did a poll and it showed that about 60% of voters were against abolishing the Department of Education. So it's a tough thing to do politically. Maybe they can sell it, maybe they can change people's minds, maybe they can have a specific plan to do so that assuages concerns, but it won't be easy as far as I can tell.

So functionally, the Trump administration could gut the department without officially having an act of Congress to abolish it. Are those the same thing, or does it kind of depend how it shakes out? It depends how it shakes out. They could certainly starve the department of resources. Certainly we could see them try to eliminate a lot of employees. They could also find other ways to configure these these programs. There's been discussion student loans

going to Treasury. There's been talk of maybe the Labor Department taking on certain responsibilities. Health and Human Services could certainly take on responsibilities. At one point the Education Department was part of what is now HHS. There's also a regulatory component. For example, we'll see them maybe try to have a narrower interpretation of what kind of civil rights cases are pursued and the scope to which they are pursued and how they interpret these laws. To be clear, the Department of Education is codified in statute. So if you really wanted to officially, legally get rid of the Department of Education as

we know it, you would need to go through Congress to do that. The easiest things for them to do legally and politically are the things that would make the smallest impact and have the smallest budget. The big ticket items, the things that cost the most, the things that probably have the smallest budget. The big ticket items, the things that cost the most, the things that probably have the most regulatory burden, Title I, funding for students with disabilities, the federal student loan program, the existence of the department itself, those are in statute. So, it's still early in his second term, but Trump is already moving on this agenda,

and his nominee for the Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, just had is already moving on this agenda. And his nominee for the Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, just had her confirmation hearing this past week. Yeah, so it was very interesting. She generally said that she supported Trump's vision to reduce federal involvement in education, though she stopped short of explicitly calling for the abolishment of the department. She said that Trump and her agreed that it would take an act of Congress to actually get rid of the department. She also emphasized that programs and funding for local public schools would not be cut even under their vision of getting rid of the Department of Education. So my two big questions after the hearing is where

does this leave the executive order? And then secondly, what exactly is the point of getting rid of the Department of Education if they want to preserve most or all of its programs? But the administration isn't waiting for its secretary to start making moves. Matt, what else is going on at the department right now? I reported just this past week that the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Education, which investigates discrimination based on race, disability status, and other things. Some of its work has been put on a pause in some of its regions, and that's according to two people who spoke to me. And that has limited their ability to do their day-to-day work of investigating civil rights issues.

Some version of a pause or disruption in work is normal with the transition, but folks that I spoke to said that this was much more restrictive than typical. All right. Last question before we go. What are you watching in the coming weeks and months to see where things are headed? We're all watching to see what this executive action looks like from the Trump administration. We expect the president to sign some kind of executive order that would start putting this process into place. We don't know exactly what it would entail. We have an idea, as we've described, but we'll all be watching for how they explicitly lay out this plan. I think the other thing to watch for politically is does this push to eliminate the Department of Education,

is that hurt by so much of this larger effort to reduce the size of government and this push by Elon Musk to change the way the federal government works? Is there going to be a backlash to all of this work that's being done collectively. The Education Department could certainly be affected by public opinion on how this government overhaul is going. I've been speaking with national political reporter Ken Thomas and education reporter Matt Barnum. Ken, Matt, thank you both. Thank you. Thank you.

And that's it for What's New Sunday for February 16th. Today's show was produced by Charlotte Gartenberg with help from Deputy Editors Scott Salloway and Chris Zinsley. I'm Alex Osela. A programming note, we're off tomorrow for the holiday, but we'll be back Tuesday morning with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening.