Two months after the Department of Education officially opened its doors in 1980, Republicans approved a policy platform calling for Congress to close it.
Now, more than 40 years later, President Trump may be closer to bringing that dream to life than other Republican presidents.
Abolishing agents requires Congressional actions, but Trump is said to be focused on his goals and preparing an executive order with the aim of dismantling it.
Trump's anchoring reinvigorated debates over the role of the federal government in education and created a strong point of unity among his party's ideological factions.
“It's a counterrevolution against hostile and nihilistic bureaucracy,” said Christopher F. Lefo, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute think tank and a trustee at New College in Florida.
Here's how the party reached this moment:
Conservatives have their arguments.
From the beginning, Republicans opposed President Jimmy Carter's signature on the 1979 law that created the 1979 law, citing beliefs about government control, fiscal responsibility and local autonomy.
They argued that education should be managed primarily at the state and local levels rather than federal missions.
A year later, Ronald Reagan won the White House. This is the third attempt in the presidency, thanks to a commitment to restrain the federal government, which said it has crossed boundaries on countless issues, including education. In 1982, Reagan used a union speech to call on Congress, eliminating two institutions: the energy sector and the education sector.
“We must cut off less important government spending and eradicate more waste. We will continue to work to reduce the number of employees in the federal workforce,” Reagan said.
He was unable to persuade Democrats to his plan under House control, and the issue began to fade as a top priority for Republicans, but never disappeared.
U.S. House Speaker Newt Ginrich then called for the agency to be abolished in the mid-1990s. In the 2008 Republican presidential primary, both Representative Ron Paul and former governor Mitt Romney supported the end of the education sector or a major reduction in the size of the education sector.
Last year, a proposal to remove government agencies was voted in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, despite the majority within the party, as 60 people opposed while 161 Republicans supported the measure.
The main role of the education sector is to send federal funds to public schools, manage university financial aid, and manage federal student loans. The agency implements civil rights laws at schools and supports programs for students with disabilities.
“The history of the education sector is a civil rights agency, where students with disabilities can get the help they need, where English learners can get the help they need,” John B. King Jr., who served as secretary of education during the Obama administration and is now Prime Minister of New York State University, told reporters Thursday. “Trapping it will harm students and their families.”
Trump reinvigorates the debate.
Trump did not mention education during his first presidential election in 2016, but he rarely mentioned it other than criticizing the Common Core standard, which aims to create some consistency across the state. He occasionally called for the removal of the education sector, but his administration did not focus on it.
But Trump is skilled at seizing problems that resonate with his conservative base. During his 2024 campaign, it meant adopting concerns from the parental rights movement, which were born out of backlash against school closures and other restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic.
The movement gained steam by organizing to oppose a progressive agenda that mandated LGBTQ students with specific educational standards and comprehensive policies. Activists argued that these policies undermine parental rights and values.
In this way, Trump's desire to eliminate the education sector was intertwined with his focus on eradicating diversity, equity and inclusion programs from the federal government.
In the draft executive order aimed at dismantling the divisions distributed in Washington this week, Trump's only specific direction for Education Secretary Linda McMahon was to end the remaining diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
On Trump's campaign website, he criticizes gender or trans issues eight times on his list of 10 principles for “great schools.”
“One of the reasons why this issue has so much momentum was undoubtedly the pandemic and the frustration of populists who had Washington not on his parents' side,” said Frederick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. “The Ministry of Education really symbolized a lot of things that were wrong.”
Project 2025 also called for the division to be demolished.
Many actions during Trump's first six weeks of office were hinted at Project 2025, a right-wing blueprint to overhaul the federal government.
This includes exporations from the education sector that have holes in the preface to the 992-page document, as workers “inject racist, anti-Americans and historical propaganda into American classrooms.”
The document argues that schools should respond to parents rather than “leftists intend to indoctrinate,” and that despite 45 years of federal spending, students' test scores have not improved. But at the same time it doesn't explain how that will change by empowering states and local school districts that have spent more exponentially on education.
“This department is traditionally an example of federal invasion into state and local territories,” reads Project 2025 Blueprint. “For American children, Congress should close it and return the control of education to the state.”
