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• By Vivek Datla, MPA • IDRA Newsletter • March 2025 •

The U.S. Department of Education is at the forefront of national discussions about the role it plays in the complex web of local, state and federal policies that shape our education system.

The transition in presidential administrations has already produced immediate and sweeping changes to the department’s operations, including through downsizing the agency’s workforce, terminating research contracts and re-interpreting civil rights protections (Schultz, 2025; Klein, 2025; Sparks & Klein, 2025).

During her confirmation hearing, the Trump administration’s Secretary of Education nominee Linda McMahon characterized the agency as rife with bureaucracy and suggested that many of the department’s core functions could be subsumed by other federal agencies.

Her characterization represents a simplistic and inaccurate portrayal of the department. In fact, the Department of Education protects and supports the rights of all students, especially those from historically marginalized backgrounds, to access a quality public education free from discrimination.

A Brief History of the Department of Education

State governments and school districts have long been the direct providers of education in this country.

In the 1960s, after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Johnson administration’s “war on poverty,” education emerged as a national priority for federal policymakers seeking to create equal educational opportunities for all students, particularly for students from lower-income backgrounds.

Between 1953 and 1979, federal education matters were housed within the larger U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW), which was devoted to multiple issue areas. While there were, and continue to be, supporters of this multi-issue model, critics at the time noted that the number of HEW offices and staff involved in making education decisions slowed progress on education issues considerably.

Ted Bell, a former education commissioner within HEW who would later serve as the first Secretary of Education under Ronald Reagan, once described his position within HEW as “one of the lowest forms of human life” with no “clout in that huge organization” (Cross, 2014).

In the same time period, the federal government’s role in supporting state systems of education increased considerably, most notably through Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), and later through the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (EAHCA), two bipartisan acts of Congress.

Through Title I, the Department of Education delivers supplemental federal funding to state governments to support school districts that educate higher concentrations of students from low-income backgrounds. This totals over 25 million students across more than half of the nation’s public schools (NCES, 2019).

Some federal policymakers expressed concerns that HEW was inadequately organized to handle the increased administrative duties created by Title I and EAHCA. This led to Congress passing legislation in 1979 to establish the U.S. Department of Education.

EAHCA was re-authorized in 1990 as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). It mandates that states provide students with disabilities equal access to a quality and free public education and allocates federal funding to make that effort possible. IDEA funding in 2022-23 served 7.5 million students with disabilities, which is 15% of all public school students (NCES, 2024a).

The Department Supports Equal Education Access for All Students

The U.S. Department of Education today does far more than just distribute Title I and IDEA funding. Its core functions “are not easily diminished, dissolved or shifted to other departments or states” as its critics suggest (Craven, 2024).

The department oversees several programs and offices that improve the quality of education instruction, support the needs of diverse student groups and combat discrimination in schools.

Through Title II of ESEA, the department leads educator improvement efforts by directing funds to states and school districts for educator preparation programs, training, recruitment and retention, and literacy improvement to increase students’ equitable access to high-quality instruction.

The department also funds research and data initiatives through the Institute of Education Sciences, which itself houses multiple research arms. These provide information for policymakers and the public about the performance of different student groups across subject areas and suggest evidence-based solutions for how to reduce performance gaps. The administration has canceled nearly $900 million and 90% of the institute’s workforce (Hechinger Report, 2025).

The department’s Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) manages Title III of ESEA, the sole federal funding stream dedicated to improving educational outcomes for 5 million English learners, who represent over 10% of public school students, and for immigrant students (Najarro, 2024; NCES, 2024b). The administration has decimated the OELA office by removing almost all if its staff (Belsha, 2025).

OELA gives school districts resources to improve educator quality and deliver effective language acquisition and enhancement programs.

The department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) identifies, investigates and resolves complaints of school-based discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, disability and age. OCR received its highest volume of complaints ever in 2024 and resolved a significant number of them in accordance with federal laws (OCR, 2024).

Most OCR complaints from 1999 to 2019 were filed for discrimination based on disability status and were filed at significantly higher rates in districts serving higher percentages of Black students (Gopalan & Lewis, 2022).

OCR’s ability to investigate discrimination complaints has already been greatly diminished through mass reductions in investigative staff and the closure of seven of 12 regional OCR offices (Bender & Nostrant, 2025).

These critical functions are only a snapshot of the responsibilities the Department of Education oversees to improve educational equity, all on an operating budget that represents less than 4% of the entire federal budget (Goldstein et al., 2025).

Who Loses with a U.S. Department Education Shutdown

Critics of the Department of Education, such as Secretary McMahon, believe the work that takes place within its buildings can be replicated within other government agencies. However, the education landscape is not the same as the one that existed when HEW first began to manage federal education concerns and students failed to receive adequate support, particularly students with disabilities, English learners, and other students from historically marginalized backgrounds. Such students now depend on the tailored work and specific expertise of the department’s employees.

State governments rely on federal funding to support school districts that cannot raise enough money through local taxes alone to adequately staff teachers and deliver student services mandated by programs like IDEA.

Education researchers rely on stable department funding to add to our collective knowledge about how to best educate an increasingly diverse body of students.

The department provides an array of support and degree of value to students and families that cannot be replicated in a minimized role within a larger federal department. Policymakers deemed that strategy inadequate decades ago. At a time when students need more support, not less, dismantling the department will cause disruptions to long-standing educational supports and administrative protections for millions of students.

Resources

Belsha, K. (March 21, 2025). Trump Education Department decimates office serving 5 million English learners in public schools. Chalkbeat.

Bender, M.C., & Nostrant, R. (March 13, 2025). Trump Firings Gut Education Department’s Civil Rights Division. New York Times.

Blad, E. (August 30, 2024). Why It’s So Hard to Kill the Education Department—and Why Some Keep Trying. Education Week.

Cohen, N., Mehta, J., Nadworny, E., & Turner, C. (February 4, 2025). A Guide to What the U.S. Education Department Does (and Doesn’t) Do. National Public Radio.

Craven, M. (November-December 2025). A Vision for Education in 2025 and Beyond (Excerpt): Educational Opportunities in a Changing Federal Landscape. IDRA Newsletter.

Cross, C.T. (September 12, 2014). Political Education: Setting the Course for State and Federal Policy. Teachers College Press.

Goldstein, E., Hogan, C., & Jouppi, D. (February 14, 2025). What Does the Department of Education Actually Do? The New York Times.

Gopalan, M., & Lewis, M.M. (2022). K-12 Civil Rights Complaints: A Nationwide Analysis. Educational Researcher, 51(9), 584-587.

Hechinger Report. (March 25, 2025). Tracking Trump: His actions to dismantle the Education Department, and more.

James, W., & Ragland, W. (July 25, 2024). Project 2025’s Elimination of Title I Funding Would Hurt Students and Decimate Teaching Positions in Local Schools. Center for American Progress.

Klein, A. (February 10, 2025). Trump Admin. Suddenly Cancels Dozens of Education Department Contracts. Education Week.

Najarro, I. (April 26, 2024). Title III Funding for English Learners, Explained. Education Week.

NCES. (May 2024a). Report on the Condition of Education 2024. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics.

NCES. (May 2024b). English Learners in Public Schools. Condition of Education. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics.

NCES. (2019). Study of the Title I, Part A Grant Program Mathematical Formulas. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics.

OCR. (2024). 2024 Fiscal Year Annual Report – Report to The President and Secretary of Education. U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights.

Pendharkar, E. (August 16, 2023). How a Federal Office Investigates and Resolves Discrimination Complaints Against Schools. Education Week.

Sparks, S.D., & Klein, A. (February 11, 2025). Educators Reeling as Trump Takes ‘Sledgehammer’ to Education Department Contracts. Education Week.

Vivek Datla, MPA, is an IDRA Education Policy Fellow. Comments and questions may be directed to him via email at vivek.datla@idra.org.

[© 2025, IDRA. This article originally appeared in the March edition of the IDRA Newsletter. Permission to reproduce this article is granted provided the article is reprinted in its entirety and proper credit is given to IDRA and the author.]