Dismantling the Department of Education: A Blueprint to Weaken Civil Rights and Defund Public Schools
Project 2025 calls for eliminating the U.S. Department of Education, converting federal K-12 funding into no-strings block grants, and expanding Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) to all families. Full statutory elimination would require Congress.
Project 2025's plan to abolish the Department of Education is not about efficiency — it's about disarming the federal government's only agency dedicated to civil rights enforcement in schools. The Department houses the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which investigates discrimination complaints based on race, disability, and sex. Moving OCR to another agency would bury its work inside a bureaucracy whose main focus is not education, slowing investigations and weakening protections for millions of students. States would lose the leverage that tied federal funding to desegregation, non-discrimination, and equitable access.
The centerpiece of the conservative education agenda is redirecting federal Title I and IDEA funds into block grants with no conditions, then funneling that money into Education Savings Accounts families could use at private or religious schools. Block grants leave state legislators free to cut education budgets without federal oversight. ESAs are vouchers by another name: they take taxpayer dollars out of public schools and give them to private institutions that do not have to accept students with disabilities, administer state tests, or report academic outcomes. For low-income families, the ESA amount rarely covers full private tuition, leaving children who remain in public schools with fewer resources. The executive order to dismantle the department, signed March 20, 2025, sets this cascade in motion. Congress has not yet passed H.R. 899 to formally terminate the Department, but the order is already being used to reassign functions and shrink the agency's footprint.
Public schools serve not only as classrooms but as the primary provider of nutrition and health services for 30 million students daily, including more than 20 million receiving free or reduced-price meals. Gutting federal investment in education would dismantle this safety net and eliminate an estimated 180,000 teaching positions under Title I alone, according to the Center for American Progress. Students with disabilities, English learners, and low-income children — who rely most on federal baseline protections — would bear the heaviest burden. The proper alternative is not to abolish the Department of Education but to fully fund Title I, enforce IDEA with real penalties for non-compliance, and expand OCR's capacity to investigate civil rights complaints efficiently. We cannot strengthen opportunity by dismantling its federal guarantor.
The humanitarian alternative
Fully fund Title I and IDEA at statutory levels, strengthen the Office for Civil Rights with dedicated enforcement staff, expand income-driven repayment and targeted debt cancellation, and reject any block-grant or ESA proposals. Reinvest in public schools as community anchors, not private-market experiments.
Rollback path — how this gets undone
This action has already been implemented. These are the concrete levers that could reverse it.
- Rescind the March 20, 2025 executive order 'Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities' The next President can sign an executive order revoking the March 20 order and directing all agencies to restore previously reassigned ED functions to the Department of Education, pending congressional action to reaffirm its statutory authority.
- Defeat H.R.899 in the House and Senate Congressional education committees and Democratic leadership must block H.R.899 from advancing; if passed, the Senate should not take it up, or a filibuster should be sustained.
Original source — excerpted
project2025 Project 2025 ch. 11: Department of Education (pp 351-353)"— 318 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise 121. U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Forest Service, “FY 1905–2021 National Summary Cut and Sold Data Graphs,” https:/ /www.fs.usda.gov/forestmanagement/documents/sold-harvest/documents/1905-2021_Natl_ Summary_Graph_wHarvestAcres.pdf (accessed December 16, 2022), and U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Forest Service, “Forest Products Cut and Sold from the National Forests and Grasslands,” https:/ /www.fs.usda. gov/forestmanagement/products/cut-sold/index.shtml (accessed December 16, 2022). 122. Donald J. Trump, “Promoting Active Management of America’s Forests, Rangelands, and Other Federal Lands to Improve Conditions and Reduce Wildfire Risk,” Executive Order 13855, December 21, 2018, https:/ /www. govinfo.gov/content/pkg/DCPD-201800866/pdf/DCPD-201800866.pdf (accessed December 16, 2022). 123. Ibid. 124. Ibid. 125. Dietary Guidelines for Americans, https:/ /www.dietaryguidelines.gov/ (accessed December 16, 2022). 126. Dietary Guidelines for Americans, “History of the Dietary Guidelines,” https:/ /www.dietaryguidelines.gov/ about-dietary-guidelines/history-dietary-guidelines (accessed December 16, 2022). 127…"