Early into U.S. President Donald Trump's second term in office, he signed an executive order aimed at ending the Department of Education. "My administration will take all lawful steps to shut down the department. We're going to shut it down and shut it down as quickly as possible. It's doing us no good," Trump said at the signing, adding that he wants to give states more control over education.
Rumors spread about what this might mean; one Democratic representative from Ohio said it amounted to "cutting funding for every student in America." Advocates for parents and children rang the alarm, claiming dismantling the department will mean unchecked discrimination against students of color and with disabilities, "larger class sizes, more schools without books and equipment and in disrepair, an end to many tutoring programs and remedial services" and more.
Then, on May 22, 2025, a federal judge blocked Trump's executive order, directing the administration to "restore the Department to the status quo" (see the last page in the court filing). That includes reinstating employees laid off amid the administration's efforts to dismantle the department.
However, the judge's decision is a temporary block as the court case makes its way through the justice system, meaning there is still a chance the administration will be allowed to move ahead with its efforts to dismantle the department, pending a final determination.
Trump's plans for what a country without a federal education department would look like are still vague, but he has suggested some functions, such as student loans, will be handled by other agencies, whereas other functions will be handed to the states. He also promised preservation of popular programs, like funding for students with disabilities and other disadvantaged groups. Experts say there may be difficulties transferring responsibilities and are concerned about the effect on civil rights for students.
Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon, in a statement released after Trump signed the executive order, said her vision "is aligned with the President's: to send education back to the states and empower all parents to choose an excellent education for their children."
Here's what you need to know about the Department of Education's future and what a country without the agency might look like.
The court case is still ongoing as of this writing, and the judge's ruling granted a preliminary injunction — a temporary order in effect as a case moves through the legal system. Thus, the courts have not made a final ruling on whether Trump's order is legal, despite indicating that it may not be.
"We will immediately challenge this [ruling] on an emergency basis," the statement from the Education Department spokesperson, Biedermann, said.
As Trump's education secretary, Linda McMahon, said during her confirmation hearing, Trump cannot legally close the Department of Education in its entirety without an act of Congress. However, he can diminish its authority and functioning.
Per a White House fact sheet, the the order directs McMahon to "take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return education authority to the States, while continuing to ensure the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely." It also "directs that programs or activities receiving any remaining Department of Education funds will not advance DEI or gender ideology."
But in issuing the preliminary injunction, U.S. District Judge Myong J. Joun said the order's direction goes "directly against Congress's intent in creating the Department" (see Page 49) and that "the record abundantly reveals" that the administration's true intention is to effectively dismantle the Department without an authorizing statute" (see Page 2).
However, the injunction, as it says in the name, is preliminary and only in effect until a "merits decision," or a final determination, is made. As Joun wrote:
This Preliminary Injunction shall become effective immediately upon entry by this Court. The Preliminary Injunction Order shall remain in effect for the duration of this litigation and until a merits decision has been issued.
What the Department of Education does
The Department of Education's primary role is financial: The agency manages student loans and financial aid for college students and distributes federal funding for marginalized students, including money to provide services for students with disabilities and at low-income schools. It also has a hand in civil rights enforcement.
"When you hear 'Department of Education,' people think that this is about education. They think it's about curriculum and instruction, it's about teaching and mathematics," said Jonathan Collins, a professor of political science and education at Columbia University. "It's actually about providing financial support for folks to be able to access colleges and universities, or to be able to use funding to support students who have different types of specialized needs."
While the Department of Education plays a relatively small role in K-12 education funding, experts say it's an important one. Colleges and universities are more reliant on federal funding for research grants and student financial aid; the Trump administration has reportedly already withheld aid from various universities and students.
However, abolishing the Department of Education in itself would not actually change much about the federal government's policies on providing funding for marginalized K-12 students or federal financial aid, said Collins and Marguerite Roza, director of Georgetown University's education finance lab.
"Honestly most of this is about politics than policy," Collins said. "This is about creating a headline, more than radically transforming the way education works — because it doesn't."
For example, Congress controls the purse strings for the two major federal programs providing financial support for services to marginalized students — the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which entitles students with disabilities to a free public education tailored to their needs, and Title I funds for students in high-poverty schools. Getting rid of the Department of Education essentially just removes the middleman, Collins and Roza said.
"I was a kid when there wasn't a Department of Education," Roza said. "Obviously there's been a lot of gains since then, but these big programs for kids with disabilities and low income kids existed before there was a Department of Education. That doesn't mean [agency employees] don't do anything useful, I just don't think schools will immediately notice."
Trump and McMahon also said they do not believe abolishing the Department of Education will affect various popular financial programs managed by the agency.
"The department's useful functions and such as they're in charge of them, Pell Grants, Title I, funding resources for children with disabilities and special needs will be preserved, fully preserved," Trump promised during his executive order signing.
Effect on operations
While policy might not change, the ability for the federal government to operate its programs might. Democrats and Republicans both are unconvinced that popular programs under the Department of Education would be properly managed should the agency be abolished and have its responsibilities transferred to other agencies.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, for example, asked McMahon at her confirmation hearing how the government will maintain "administration and oversight" of programs like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Title I and TRIO, a Department of Education outreach initiative aimed at supporting disadvantaged students in pursuit of a college degree. McMahon reiterated that she isn't looking to defund any of these programs and suggested the Department of Health and Human Services could take over IDEA.
"So, I just want to be clear," said Sen. Maggie Hassan, a Democrat from New Hampshire. "You're going to put special education in the hands of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?" (The secretary of health and human services' efforts to falsely link vaccines to autism worry many advocates for students with disabilities.)
Trump has said that, should the Department of Education be abolished, student loans would fall under the purview of the Treasury Department, the Department of Commerce or the Small Business Administration. He told reporters he thinks it will be the SBA: "I don't think education should be handling the loans, that's not their business. I think it will be brought into small business, maybe."
Collins, the education policy expert, said the Small Business Administration makes sense from a "pure administrative standpoint" because "that's what they do — they essentially manage the process of providing and monitoring loan payment." The problem, however, is that the SBA already struggles to handle its own work, Collins said, pointing to its COVID-19 funding debacle.
"The majority of folks who enter a college or higher education institution walk out with the student loan that they are borrowing from the federal government. This is a huge enterprise here," Collins said. "The idea of adding over 40 million borrowers also to [SBA's] docket sheet — it does seem unwise."
The Trump administration's efforts to gut staff at the Department of Education, announced March 11, have reportedly already affected access to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Roza, of Georgetown University, said there are "legitimate questions" about how losing the staff at the Department of Education by dismantling the agency will affect loan and grant processing for financial aid to students that haven't yet been answered by the White House.
Effect on civil rights
Collins said his biggest concern should the country lose the Department of Education is the agency's Office of Civil Rights. While states usually have their own civil rights offices within state education departments, the federal agency's investigations into discrimination in education often resulted in consequential court cases that "have gotten us closer to a more fair and just education system," Collins said — think lawsuits related to Title IX, the civil rights law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in education programs, for example.
The effect won't be immediate, Collins said — but in a few decades, "we might look back at this moment and say wow, this is when things are happening that went overlooked that completely put us on a different trajectory."
The American Civil Liberties Union also sounded the alarm, noting that the March 11 Department of Education staff cuts reportedly involved terminating staff in seven of the Office of Civil Rights' 12 regional offices.
"Gutting the OCR severely weakens federal civil rights enforcement, leaving millions of students without crucial protections against discrimination," the ACLU said. "It also suppresses students' ability to seek justice when their rights are violated and allows discriminatory practices, including uneven and unfair targeting of students of color for school discipline, inequitable access to advanced coursework, the refusal to provide accommodations to students with disabilities, and discrimination against students with limited English proficiency or English learner status to persist unchecked."
However, Roza said the Office of Civil Rights has been "at the whim of the president" in recent years; under Trump, it has been ordered to refocus priorities on antisemitism, transgender issues and anti-DEI complaints, The Associated Press reported.
The ACLU said getting rid of the Department of Education may also affect the federal government's capacity to collect data, which the ACLU noted is "an essential resource for identifying and addressing disparities in education."