Dismantling the Department of Education: Project 2025’s Blueprint for Defunding Public Schools and Weakening Civil Rights
Project 2025 proposes transferring Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and OSERS to DOJ, moving student loans to a government corporation, and cutting Title I, IDEA, and Pell Grant enforcement.
Project 2025’s education chapter isn't about improving schools—it's about dismantling the federal role that ensures every child, regardless of zip code, has access to a quality education. The plan to move OCR and OSERS to DOJ would strip civil rights enforcement of its education-specific expertise and turn it into a litigation-only function, leaving students with disabilities and victims of discrimination without the proactive oversight that ED’s Office for Civil Rights currently provides. Transferring Vocational Rehabilitation Grants for Native American students to the Bureau of Indian Education isolates these programs from broader disability support. Shrinking the student loan program by spinning off FSA into a government corporation and selling the portfolio would force millions of borrowers into private loans with higher interest rates and fewer protections—a $1.7 trillion heist from public good to private profit.
Instead of this fragmentation, we should fully fund Title I to close resource gaps for low-income schools, fully enforce the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) through a robust OSERS, and strengthen OCR’s ability to investigate discrimination proactively—not just litigate after harm. We should preserve the federal student loan program as a public good, with income-driven repayment and targeted cancellation to address the $1.7 trillion debt crisis. The evidence is overwhelming: court-ordered school finance reforms that increase spending on disadvantaged students boost test scores and lifetime earnings. Defunding the Department of Education is a direct attack on economic mobility.
The humanitarian alternative
Fully fund Title I and IDEA at authorized levels, expand bipartisan legislation like the FAIR Act to index Pell Grants to inflation, maintain the federal student loan program with income-driven repayment and targeted cancellation, and strengthen OCR with dedicated education civil rights staff. Block any sale of the federal loan portfolio and any transfer of OCR or OSERS to DOJ that removes education-specific enforcement capacity.
Rollback path — how this gets undone
This action has already been implemented. These are the concrete levers that could reverse it.
- Rescind Executive Order 'Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities' The next administration must issue a new executive order rescinding the March 20, 2025 EO, restoring ED’s authority and reversing any self-dissolution actions taken. This is a simple presidential action.
- Pass a Department of Education Preservation Act Congress can pass a statute explicitly prohibiting the executive branch from dismantling ED, transferring its functions, or impounding appropriated funds for Title I, IDEA, or Pell Grants, bypassing the need for future EO rescission.
Reversing it is step one. The forward agenda — what we build so it can’t recur — is in Answers to this entry →
Original source — excerpted
project2025 Project 2025 ch. 11: Department of Education (pp 360-363)"— 327 — Department of Education l Transfer the Vocational Rehabilitation Grants for Native American students to the Bureau of Indian Education. l Phase out earmarks for a variety of special institutions, as originally envisioned. l To the extent that OSERS supports federal efforts to enforce our laws against discrimination of individuals with disabilities, those assets should be moved to the Department of Justice (DOJ) along with the Office for Civil Rights (OCR). Office for Postsecondary Education (OPE) l The next Administration should work with Congress to eliminate or move OPE programs to ETA at the Department of Labor. l Funding to institutions should be block-granted and narrowed to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and tribally controlled colleges. l Move programs deemed important to our national security interests to the Department of State. Institute of Education Sciences (IES) l Move ED’ s statistical office, the National Commission for Education Statistics (NCES), to the Department of Commerce’ s Census Bureau. If Congress believes the federal government can play a valuable research role, those research centers can be moved to the N…"