President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to eliminate the Department of Education and allow states to oversee education—or the lack thereof.
“One other thing I’ll be doing very early in the administration is closing the Department of Education in Washington, D.C., and sending all education and education working needs back to the states,” he said in a video message on Truth Social.
Trump added that the Department of Education is staffed by people who "in many cases, hate our children" and “we want states to run the education of our children because they’ll do a much better job of it. You can’t do worse.”
But that could mean that children could get widely different education depending on where they grow up. For years, the GOP has been attacking education by implementing book bans in red states and attacks on transgender children by falsely claiming teachers are trying to assign sex changes for their students. Now, they’re in a position of power to dismantle education completely.
Children’s education has long been a political battleground for the conservative and religious right. But under a second Trump presidency, it’s unclear how much lasting damage will be done.
“We are going to close the Department of Education in Washington, D.C., and send it back to the States, where it belongs, and let the States run our educational system as it should be run,” the 2024 GOP platform detailed in its policy proposal guide. “Our Great Teachers, who are so important to the future well-being of our Country, will be cherished and protected by the Republican Party so that they can do the job of educating our students that they so dearly want to do.”
Republicans in states such as Texas, Utah, and Missouri have successfully implemented book bans. In Florida, more than 40% of book bans occurred in the 2022-23 school year, with 1,406 books prohibited. According to PEN America, a nonprofit focused on writers and the First Amendment, a quarter of the banned books include LGBTQ+ themes, with nearly a third including characters of color.
“These titles largely include depictions of sex, or feature LBGTQ+ people and characters, or people and characters of color,” PEN America found. “The titles are commonly included on lists circulated online by individuals and groups calling for greater restrictions and censorship of books in schools.”
There’s also been a recent effort to divest public school funding into private education with the help of billionaires. According to reporting by The 19th, state funding for public schools has stagnated over the past decade, rising just 1% annually on average, adjusting for inflation. However, state spending on tax breaks and subsidies for private schools rose by a staggering 408%.
Trump has also attacked critical race theory as part of the school curriculum, which is generally not taught in K-12 education. As reported by Oliver Willis for Daily Kos, Trump went on “Fox & Friends” in October, where he was asked by co-host Brian Kilmeade, “So, let’s say you have a liberal city, Los Angeles, San Diego, and they just decide, ‘Oh, we’re going to get rid of that history. We have new history. This is America built off the backs of slaves on stolen land. And that curriculum comes in?”
“Then we don’t send them money,” Trump replied.
Discussion of gender in schools has been a central conservative talking point throughout President Joe Biden’s term and leading up to November’s presidential election.
Fox News loves to run segments on the subject. In January 2023, Fox News reported on how a nonbinary California teacher allegedly assigned children “sex changes” without parental consent. And another Fox News story focused on how a New York school teacher “forced” and “manipulated” a fifth grader to become transgender.
In a segment called “Trouble with Schools” on Fox News, California mom Jessica Konen alleged that teachers convinced her child that she was transgender.
According to Konen, her 11-year-old child began researching gender fluidity and gender changes. This was after the mother alleged that she was encouraged by teachers to change her pronouns and only use her birth pronouns around the—perhaps unsupportive—parent.
“My child rapidly started going through changes,” said Konan. “Experiencing sexuality in a different way than she had ever done before. . . I was very concerned about it.”
“I know you went to the school board and let them have it. And I was proud of you for that,” “Fox & Friends” co-host and anchor Ainsley Earhardt said.
The Trump administration’s push for decentralization and state-level control aims to not only dismantle federal oversight but to solidify its influence over what children are taught, what they read, how they explore and learn about their bodies, and how they navigate their young lives.
Betsy DeVos, the secretary of education during Trump’s first administration, was truly awful. In fact, Sen. Elizabeth Warren called her “the worst Secretary of Education ever.” It remains to be seen how much damage Trump can do to education this time around.