Kody Hanner
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What Would Losing the Department of Education Mean?
We are an educated nation. We are a nation that puts value on education. We are a nation that relies on the public school system as child care to allow us to earn a living. Our nation supports kids with disabilities and meals for struggling families through public schools. Losing such a core federal department feels wrong on every level! And that is what the system of public reliance and overstepping federal control wants you to think.
History time!
The Department of Education wasn’t even founded until 1979 by President Jimmy Carter. Before then, the federal government’s role in education was to provide state funding. These funds were used for primary education, and they had provided funding for the land grant agricultural universities and their research through the Morrill Act of 1862, as well as a few other acts over the years.
Federal school involvement had a big (and sometimes considered negative) impact on rural schools following Theodore Roosevelt’s Country Life Commission changes in 1908. At this time, the population of people living in urban areas surpassed the number living rurally. It was believed that the people moving to cities were primarily the educated youth, therefore only leaving behind the uneducated. This led the Country Life Commission to implement school districts in hopes of organizing rural education. The hope was that students were educated and then taught agriculture and homemaking, more young people would stay home in the country.
This would have been great, had vocational agriculture continued as a primary focus in schools for longer than just a generation or two. Instead, what it did was destroy rural communities by preventing students from being supported by small towns and subcommunity individual values. This often made schools further away from students, making it where they could not attend or had to neglect their farm responsibilities. This put further strain on families and the state of rural education.
Taxation without representation
I have heard statements insinuating that agencies like the Department of Education were unconstitutional in the first place because they were not originally outlined by the constitution or the Bill of Rights. This actually is not the case. More correctly, is that the founding fathers left many parts of this type of government purposefully ambiguous in order to accommodate growth of the nation through the executive decisions to help the general welfare of the people.
However, what has been widely forgotten by the majority of the population (or possibly, purposefully swayed), is that the states were intended to have more power and that the federal government should be there for issues related to international affairs, defense, interstate issues, and unity. The states should handle everything else. What has ended up happening, is that with education being handled at the federal level, is that not everyone agrees with how public education is handled. Hence the reason there are so many homeschool families now!
When large populations of citizens are unhappy with how a department is being handled, but do not have a “loud” enough voice to make changes, it officially becomes taxation without representation, which IS unconstitutional.
How the abolishment of the Department of Education will affect students
If the department of education is dismantled, all federal funding that is earmarked for education will be distributed to the states (much like it is now), but the states will be able to decide how the money should be spent. This HUGE when considering how diverse each state is. They have different climates, geography, agriculture, cultural diversity, and values. So when decisions are made at the state level, the education is more tailored to the students that will receive it and the taxpayers will have more say over how the funding is spent. There will be more accountability with each student holding a higher ratio of funds to importance.
There are many programs that aren’t directly related to education, but are facilitated through the Department of Education or people believe are handled through the Department of Education. These programs are either going to be handled by more appropriate departments or will simply continue to be handled by their current department. Below, I will go over a few of those questions.
What about college loans and grants?
They aren’t going anywhere. They will be handled by the Department of Treasury. This is a more efficient way of handling these programs, cutting out a bunch of middlemen. If there is any concern about veterans not receiving GI Bills, don’t worry, that is handled by the Department of Veterans Affairs anyway. Any specialty grants and loans will be handled through the department that they correspond with. Such as the programs to help students into medical or veterinary fields will be handled by the Department of Public Health.
How will underprivileged kids eat?
Many people are using the scare tactic that if the Department of Education is dismantled, low-income children will get their two free meals a day (that are sometimes their only meal). I have good news! This program is handled by the Farm Bill along with Food Stamps, WIC, and a few other welfare programs. I think those should be reevaluated as well, but you can read about that in my blog about why we should be growing our own food.
Will kids with disabilities lose their support?
No! And I say this emphatically because I have an autistic son. I know how important these services are to families, especially those without good insurance or that need to work full time. These will be transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services under section 3 of the proposed law. These programs include EIPs, 504s, Early Intervention, and free special education.
What about Indian education?
Have you ever chatted with native americans about how they feel about government involvement? Because, guess what, they don’t want us involved. Don’t worry, it’s going to the Department of the Interior, anyways. There are several programs to support Indian education, but they aren’t going anywhere.
Are students’ civil rights going to be protected?
They are going to be handled better! This is because the Department of Justice will investigate and enforce them. This department can fix these problems rather than the Department of Education turning it into a bureaucratic issue.
Are states going to start funding homeschooled students?
With money going to the states, many states are considering school choice bills or educational savings accounts. This allows students to spend their allotted tax money on charter programs, a school outside of their district, private schools, publicly funded home education programs, and in some states homeschooled students. There are a few ways in which these funds can be accessed.
One is through tax credits. States will still receive all their current funding to keep programs running as is, but parents can get tax breaks. In the long run, public schools may need to reallocate how they operate as more funds become less available due to less taxes being paid toward the programs. However, schools still get state funding through programs like the lotto and federal vocational education bills.
The second way is through state grants that are awarded to qualifying families to use toward educational materials. Currently, many states already have these programs in place as they are for all students, not just homeschooled ones, for tutoring, extracurricular activities, interest-based learning, and enhancement programs. Many of these programs have nothing to do with the Department of Education and are funded through Covid grants, rural development, and inner city initiatives.
And finally, the most controversial one, is complete school choice (with the money following). This would allow all or most of the funds a state allocates for a student to follow or be used by the student’s family for educational purposes. This means that (as of 2025) an average of up to $17,700 would no longer go to a school district if a student did not attend public school. That amount could go towards private school tuition, including religious institutions as mandated federally. Or they could be allocated in part directly to families for homeschool expenses or other non-accredited programs like farm schools. However, the money is not just handed over, they are administered through agencies that oversee how the funds are spent through approvals and receipts. This would hurt the public system the most. But primarily in the short run. In the long run, the money is still there and would be diverse through communities through new programs becoming available in response to educational freedom.
Sidenote from a homeschooler
Contrary to popular belief, many homeschool families are not completely behind school choice programs. This is because they do not want the eventual government control that will come from accepting educational funding. In tandem with these programs, states have introduced legislation like “Make Homeschool Safe,” that puts additional laws on home schooling that have nothing to do with educational requirements. Laws like required vaccinations that are the reasons that many families have opted out of public schooling.
As homeschoolers, we are not against that option of additional funding, especially for families that can not afford curriculum or have special needs children. We just want to make sure the laws are not overstepping and that we can opt out of the funding if we don’t want the control as well.
So, is the Department of Education going away?
Maybe. As of writing this on March 5, 2025, the Department of Education has not been abolished. If the executive order is signed, it would still need to be passed through Congress due to the nature of this department. But since both the House of Representatives and the Senate have a republican majority, there is a high chance that this is something we could see one day soon.