Critics say low-income students could suffer in red-state rural schools.

By Arthur Jones II
August 21, 2024,

Democrats have made conservatives’ controversial Project 2025 and its education agenda a weapon in their attacks against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at the Democratic National Convention.

Dismantling the Department of Education is a key issue for conservatives this election season and is mentioned in the 922-page playbook for the next conservative president. And while Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, it aligns in many ways with his Agenda 47 platform.

President Joe Biden slammed the Republican vision for education as he addressed the Democratic National Convention on Monday night.

"Donald Trump, and his Republican friends, they not only can't think, they can't read very well," Biden said, adding,"Seriously, think about it. Look at their Project 2025. They want to do away with the Department of Education."

Michelle Obama touched on the subject in her speech the following night: "Shutting down the Department of Education, banning our books -- none of that will prepare our kids for the future."

Trump reiterated his plan for education in his wide-ranging X Spaces interview last week with Elon Musk.

"I want to close up the Department of Education [and] move education back to the states," Trump told Musk's more than 1 million listeners, claiming that the U.S. had fallen to the bottom of rankings among other countries and that states do a better job educating their children without federal mandates.

The U.S. is not ranked at the bottom, as Trump claimed, but due to historic learning loss during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is close to the bottom half in subjects like math in the most recent Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Nearly a third of U.S. students also ended last school year behind grade level in at least one academic subject, according to new data released by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

It's unclear whether the former president would close the agency and redistribute its funding to states or stop funding it and close it altogether. ABC News has reached out to the Trump campaign but didn't receive a response by time of publication.

Critics of the plan say it would hurt mostly small, rural school systems, many of them in red states.

In an interview with the nonprofit More Perfect Union, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said he would defend public education against defunding because it would exacerbate the "haves and the have-nots." An Education Department official warned that if the agency were shuttered, states would lose a "large chunk" of funding from the feds and state and local governments -- on average about 10%. State and local governments make up roughly 90% of public school funding.

Education finance expert Jess Gartner said school districts with the "highest need" students could take a devastating blow if the federal agency's funding was cut because funding for school districts isn't always equally distributed.

"Those targeted funds were being targeted for a reason," Gartner said.

'I can't find the word 'education' in [the Constitution]'

House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., is one of the most vocal opponents of the department. She raises caregivers' and local school board members' concerns that they shouldn't have to "co-parent" with the government.

Conservatives also reject what they characterize as bureaucrats infusing culture war topics into their kids' school curriculums.

Foxx argued it's unconstitutional for the government to handle state education issues in the first place.

"I can't find the word 'education' in there [the Constitution] as one of the duties and responsibilities of Congress or the federal government," Foxx told ABC News.

That ideology gives way for Trump to work with Foxx and congressional Republicans to pass a department closure if he wins the White House and Republicans maintain control of the House and take over the Senate in November, according to Arnold Ventures Director of Higher Education Clare McCann.

In theory, McCann said, Trump could make the shift with congressional approval but it's unlikely it would happen immediately. There would need to be a support system to dole out the money to states, but that's something the department would be equipped to do.

"There's a reason the Department of Education was created and it was to have this kind of in-house expertise and policy background on these issues," McCann said. "The civil servants who work at the Department of Education are true experts in the field," she added.

Arkansas moves against 'indoctrinating' students

Former Trump White House press secretary Sarah Sanders has pushed for conservative education reform since becoming the first woman elected as the state's governor in 2022. Last year, she signed into law the state's LEARNS Act, which calls for raising minimum teacher salaries, introducing universal pre-K, banning teaching on "gender identity, sexual orientation, and sexual reproduction" before fifth grade and banning curriculum that would "indoctrinate students with ideologies, such as Critical Race Theory."

It also instituted a universal voucher program for so-called "school choice," which is also similar to plans in Trump's Agenda 47 and Project 2025.

Superintendent of the Little Rock School District Jermall Wright said abolishing the Department of Education would be "catastrophic."

Wright, who cited friction with the school board in announcing last week he was stepping down from his position after two years on the job, said such an action would hinder title and grant funding meant to supplement state funding. He also fears it would strip states of Title I funding for low-income and disadvantaged students as well as McKinney-Vento funds, which includes support for the unhoused and transient populations.

"We rely on those additional funds to provide, you know, an array of services and supports for students and families," Wright told ABC News. "The face of homelessness has changed. It's not just, you know, people who are living on streets. We have extremely mobile families. They move from apartments to apartments, hotels, motels, etc. We have children who may live with family members that are not their biological parents. All those types of situations."

Before Little Rock, Wright led the Mississippi Achievement School District -- which encompasses two smaller districts totaling about 5,000 students in the rural Mississippi Delta. He said he saw firsthand the amount of federal aid some districts in the poorest state in the nation rely on.

"In those small rural districts, the majority of our funding came from federal funds, which I'd never experienced that a day before in any place that I had worked," he said, adding "Those districts wouldn't be able to survive, let alone, you just can't function."

Wright also said the federal agency plays an essential role in overseeing states' civil rights issues.
An impact on vulnerable students

That's a concern in other states like California, where education advocates worry abolishing the department would have an impact on vulnerable students and students with disabilities as well as general learning outcomes for students and teachers.

"There's a critical role for the U.S. Department of Education to support states in thinking about how to meet the needs of student groups who either have been marginalized, underserved, or for whom we really haven't had the opportunity to think about how best to meet their needs," said Sarah Lillis, California executive director for Teach Plus

Gartner, the education finance expert, said much of this conversation is dependent on economic opportunity, not location.

"There are very wealthy districts in California and there are very poor districts in California [and everywhere else]," Gartner told ABC News. "Wealthy districts aren't going to be impacted very much by their Title I money being cut. They're going to go out and pass a bond and raise that money – and then some – locally in two days. It's the poor, rural district that's going to be devastated by that and have no recourse to fill that gap."

Due to their emphasis on local control, states like Texas with strong economies would virtually be unaffected, according to state policy experts.

Others say they don't need the feds' help.

Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction Debbie Critchfield said the state doesn't look to the U.S. Department of Education for guidance on education policy. She told ABC News that she’s fine with abolishing the agency.

"We are making decisions about education focused on our own state," Critchfield told ABC News, adding "It is very rare that we're reaching out to the federal government to help us know what initiatives and goals we want to have here for our kids in Idaho."

Critchfield believes shuttering the department would have “little impact” on her state.

"We don't look to them [the Department of Education] to say what should we be working on," Critchfield said. "I'm talking to leaders in the state, local school boards, parents in our state, they're the ones telling me what I should be focused on. Outside of [the Department of Education] watchdogging, the influence on outcomes just isn't there."