By Tami Luhby, Sunlen Serfaty and Kayla Tausche | CNN
President Donald Trump kicked off the process of dismantling the Department of Education by signing an executive order on Thursday.
The move aims to fulfill a longstanding campaign promise and shift more power over education to the states. While the president cannot completely shut down the agency without approval from Congress, the department announced earlier this month that nearly half its staff would leave through layoffs and voluntary buyouts.
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It remains to be seen what will happen to the agency’s programs and functions, and legal challenges to Trump’s executive order are likely.
Federal funding for students with disabilities, who fall under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, along with Title I funding for low-income schools and federal student loan payments, will not be changed by the order, a senior administration official said. However, the order bans programs or activities receiving agency funds from advancing diversity, equity and inclusion or gender ideology.
Supporters of the order have said that education oversight should be returned to the states and parents, while opponents argue that that the move will harm children and their ability to learn.
Here’s what to know about the Trump administration’s effort to dismantle the Department of Education:
Low-income, rural and disabled students could be impacted
The Department of Education provides tens of billions of dollars in funding to support millions of students in low-income and rural areas and those with disabilities – and advocates are concerned about what the agency’s shuttering could mean for them.
The agency funnels more than $18 billion in supplemental funding annually to local school districts to provide extra academic support to schools with high rates of poverty. Title I grants serve about 26 million low-income students.
The dismantling of the department, along with the loss of many of its staffers, raises concerns about ensuring that states and districts will use the federal funds in the best ways to lead to positive outcomes for students, said Weade James, senior director for K-12 education policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. For instance, she questioned whether states will track students’ progress.
Also, rural and smaller school districts rely on the Department of Education for technical assistance and for the implementation of the Title I grants and other programs, she noted.
“It’s very important that we continue to question how these cuts are going to impact students because indeed they are,” James said. “There’s going to be a loss of expertise and a loss of data collection, oversight and accountability.”
The Department of Education also sets the parameters around accommodations for disabled students, ensuring that they have the right to a free and appropriate public education. The agency helps fund schools for the deaf and blind in the US and oversees the Rehabilitation Services Administration, which provides services that aim to help Americans with disabilities live more independently and land jobs. The department provides more than $15 billion annually to help serve 7.4 million students through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, known as IDEA.
What happens to these functions remains to be seen, but Project 2025, a sweeping plan to overhaul the federal government written by several people in Trump’s orbit, called for the functions to be shifted to the Department of Health and Human Services, which is not as knowledgeable about the programs, said Mia Ives-Rublee, senior director for the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress. That could make it much more difficult for students with disabilities to get the services they need, she said.
“What we do know is we’re going to see a radical change in the way we provide or don’t provide services to disabled students,” she said.
Questions remain around management of federal student loans
The Department of Education has struggled to find a viable alternative agency to manage its massive student debt portfolio, according to two sources involved in the discussions. The loan portfolio totals a staggering $1.8 trillion in debt, with an estimated 40% of loans past due, the sources said, up from what CNN has previously reported based on publicly available information.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced ahead of the executive order’s signing on Thursday that certain “critical functions” like student loans and administering grants to at-risk students would remain with the Department of Education, but Trump later said those functions would be redistributed to other agencies.
The discrepancy could set up a challenge for Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who is required by law to carry out some of the department’s congressionally mandated functions, including administering loans and providing grants for schools in high-poverty areas.
The president had previously suggested that the portfolio – which is larger than all but three US banks – would be transferred to the Treasury Department or Small Business Administration, though those plans have not taken shape.
“Treasury doesn’t want it,” according to one of the sources involved in the discussions, who also told CNN no conversations about moving it to the Small Business Administration had advanced.
Local school curriculum won’t be directly impacted by Trump’s order
The Department of Education does not have control over the curriculum in schools.
In creating the Department of Education, Congress said:
“No provision of a program administered by the Secretary or by any other officer of the Department shall be construed to authorize the Secretary or any such officer to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution, school, or school system, over any accrediting agency or association, or over the selection or content of library resources, textbooks, or other instructional materials by any educational institution or school system, except to the extent authorized by law.”
Responsibility for curriculum falls on states and localities, so the executive order would not affect students’ curriculum directly.
The Department of Education has announced cuts of nearly 50% to its workforce
Through a combination of layoffs and voluntary “buyouts,” the Department of Education has announced plans to nearly halve its workforce since Trump took office.
One of the offices hit hardest by the job cuts, the Office for Civil Rights, works to protect students by holding schools and colleges that receive federal funds accountable for combating antisemitism, islamophobia, racism and discrimination against students with disabilities.
The Trump administration is shuttering seven of the office’s 12 regional offices and laying off nearly half of its staff
What happens to the office is still uncertain. But employees within the office have told CNN they are extremely concerned about their ability to process the claims effectively with half of the staff.
“This will completely halt the vast majority of cases that we can take in, evaluate and investigate,” said one employee at OCR, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution.
CNN’s Jeff Zeleny contributed to this story.
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