As Linda McMahon, President Donald Trump’s nominee for education secretary, sits for a Senate confirmation hearing Thursday, it’s important to remember that Trump is reportedly considering signing an executive order that seeks to eliminate the Education Department.
There’ve been Republicans who’ve wanted to dismantle the department since Congress established it during President Jimmy Carter’s administration in 1979. In his 1982 State of the Union address, for example, President Ronald Reagan said he wanted to eliminate the department. Unsurprisingly, Project 2025 — which Trump claimed he knew nothing about on the campaign trail even as he adopted many parts of the framework — also calls for the department’s dismantling.
There’ve been Republicans who’ve wanted to dismantle the Education Department since Congress established it in 1979.
Needless to say, a president can’t unilaterally eliminate a governmental agency without an act of Congress. Undoing the Education Department would almost certainly be challenged in the courts the way many of Trump’s other policy initiatives are being challenged.
According to the Education Department, its elementary and secondary programs serve more than 50 million students in about 98,000 public schools and 32,000 private schools. The department notes that its “grant, loan, and work-study” programs help “more than 12 million postsecondary students.”
Beyond the Education Department’s doing so much for so many people, it is an irreplaceable lifeline for students with disabilities. And Trump’s desire to dismantle it — along with his picking Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to serve as secretary of health and human services — rightly alarms the parents of disabled students.
Kennedy is expected to be confirmed as HHS secretary by the full Senate on Thursday. Last week, before members of the Senate Finance Committee voted on that nomination, Trump wrote on social media, “We need BOBBY!!!” as he wrongly claimed that autism rates have jumped from 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 34 in 20 years.
Kennedy, of course, has helped spread the lie that childhood vaccines have caused an increase in the number of people who have autism.
As for the numbers, in 2005 about 1 in 166 children had been diagnosed with autism. Today the number is 1 in 36. The truth is there are more diagnoses because the definition of what counts as autism has been expanded.
Also, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990, a reauthorization of what had been the Education for Handicapped Children Act, included autism as a covered disability, and as a result, schools had to report the numbers of students it served.
Counting children with disabilities is one of a handful of ways the Education Department, which enforces IDEA, serves students with disabilities and their families. But if Trump and Republicans have their way, these crucial protections might soon be eroded.
“I’ve witnessed the transformative power of education, both in the classroom and also in apprenticeship programs,” McMahon said in a November statement. “I look forward to working collaboratively with students — educators — parents and communities to strengthen our educational system; ensuring every child regardless of their demographics is prepared for a bright future.”
It’s impossible to square her promise to look after the needs of every child with the idea in Project 2025 that “[m]ost IDEA funding should be converted into a no-strings formula block grant targeted at students with disabilities and distributed directly to local education agencies.” Project 2025 also suggests moving IDEA oversight to HHS.
The federal government has pledged to cover 40% of the average per-pupil expenditure, but on average, it spends only half as much.
Removing the strings would effectively kill the requirements to ensure students’ inclusion. As Jack Pitney, a former Republican National Committee researcher and an expert on autism, said: “IDEA is not a civil rights law that applies across the board. Its requirements are conditions of federal aid — also known as ‘strings.’” Pitney continued: “When you cut the strings, you gut the law.”
Despite the law’s promise to provide students a “Free Appropriate Public Education,” that is often not the case. It isn’t my intention here to defend the way the United States educates students with disabilities. In 1975, Congress pledged to cover 40% of the average per-pupil expenditure and later amended the pledge to say it would cover a “maximum” of 40%. But on average, the government spends only half as much as it promised to spend in 1975. A lack of funding contributes to schools’ not having enough personnel to give disabled students the education they deserve.
Congress hasn’t reauthorized IDEA since 2004. A 2024 evaluation of how it’s being implemented found that most states needed assistance in implementing the requirements for either students ages 3 to 21 or students 2 and younger. Things need to be better. Parents are right to be frustrated with the bureaucracy.
And it’s impossible to conceive of things getting better if the Education Department is eliminated, because the department has had the role of enforcing IDEA, which enshrined protections for people with disabilities in a way previous generations of students didn’t have. It allowed them to have individualized education plans tailored for their success.
In 1970, only 1 in 5 students with disabilities went to public school. Nearly 1.8 million children were excluded from public schools in 1970. Now, about 15% of students in public schools receive special education services. This should be celebrated.
In 1970, only 1 in 5 students with disabilities went to public school.
Furthermore, the alternative that Trump and Republicans propose — school vouchers or education savings accounts — would be insufficient. Even though vouchers are marketed as an alternative for students with disabilities, a Government Accountability Office report from 2017 found that many private schools don’t inform families with disabled children that they have fewer rights under IDEA when they move from public to private schools.
Education programs for students with disabilities aren’t working the way they ought to. This is one area where Trump and the contributors to Project 2025 have a kernel of truth. But putting McMahon and Kennedy in charge or throwing out the Education Department would cause these already vulnerable students more harm.
