Project 2025’s Education Blueprint: Dismantling Civil Rights Protections and Defunding Public Schools

Project 2025’s education agenda is not about efficiency or local control—it is a deliberate plan to defund the schools that serve the most vulnerable students and to dismantle the federal civil rights infrastructure that ensures every child has access to an equal education. The centerpiece is the elimination of the Department of Education, which the Trump administration began executing via executive order on March 20, 2025. While that order cannot statutorily abolish the department without Congress, it has already triggered the reassignment and wind-down of key functions.

The specific proposals in Project 2025 would gut the federal role in education. Title I, the primary federal investment in low-income school districts, would be transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services as a block grant with no strings attached—meaning no requirement that dollars follow need, no oversight of equitable distribution, and no accountability for outcomes. After a 10-year phase-out, states would be expected to pick up the funding, yet nothing in the plan requires states to maintain current funding levels. The result would be a massive wealth transfer from the poorest districts to the richest, reversing decades of progress documented by researchers like Lafortune, Rothstein, and Schanzenbach, who found that school finance reforms narrowed achievement gaps by one-fifth over a decade.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act would suffer a similar fate: converted into a no-strings block grant administered by the Administration for Community Living at HHS. This removes the federal requirement that schools provide a free appropriate public education to students with disabilities. Without IDEA’s enforcement teeth, school districts could simply ignore the needs of students with disabilities, and families would lose their primary legal recourse. Impact Aid, which compensates districts for lost property tax revenue from federal property like military bases and tribal lands, would be eliminated for non-student programs and remainder shifted to the Department of Defense or Bureau of Indian Education—agencies with no expertise in K–12 education. The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, a small voucher experiment, would be expanded into a universal, formula-funded program and moved to HHS, accelerating the funneling of public dollars to private, often religious schools that are not required to serve all students, comply with IDEA, or report outcomes.

These are not abstract policy debates. They are a coordinated attack on the federal commitment to educational equity. The executive order is already in motion; the statutory dismantlement awaits a Congress that, under Project 2025’s influence, could be next. The alternative is clear: fully fund Title I and IDEA, enforce civil rights through a strong Office for Civil Rights, and reject voucher schemes that drain resources from public schools. The evidence is overwhelming that money matters—Rothstein and Schanzenbach (2022) found that increased spending in low-income districts raises attainment and earnings. We must fight to keep the Department of Education intact and its protections robust.