Tag: department of education

Trump just signed an executive order ‘to begin eliminating’ the Department of Education. Here’s how that could affect student loans and local schools.

Posted on by Lone Candle

Trump just signed an executive order ‘to begin eliminating’ the Department of Education. Here’s how that could affect student loans and local schools.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-just-signed-an-executive-order-to-begin-eliminating-the-department-of-education-heres-how-that-could-affect-student-loans-and-local-schools-205908574.html

Education Department announces mass layoffs as executive order looms

Posted on by Lone Candle

“The Education Department will begin cutting more than 1,300 people from its workforce and terminating some of its office leases across the country this week, as part of the Trump administration’s broader effort to cull the size of the U.S. government’s smallest Cabinet agency.
An agency official told reporters Tuesday that the job cuts being finalized over the coming weeks are expected to affect roughly half of the agency’s workforce.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/11/education-department-close-security-00224406

Why Trump wants to end the Department of Education — and what will change if he succeeds

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Today the Department of Education oversees a budget of $268 billion. Its role, according to the DOE itself, is to “establish policy for, administer and coordinate most federal assistance to education.”

That assistance takes two forms. The first is loans and grants. A full 60% of the Education Department’s 2024 budget (or $160 billion) went to the Office of Federal Student Aid, which administers Pell Grants, federal direct subsidized loans, federal direct unsubsidized loans and the federal work-study program. Pell Grants help roughly one-third of U.S. undergraduates — all from lower-income families — pay for college, with an average award of about $4,500. At the same time, more than half of undergraduates in the United States receive federal loans to make college more affordable.

The second form of DOE assistance is spending on public elementary and secondary education. The largest federal fund for K-12 schools is Title I, which supplements state and local funding for low-achieving children, especially in poor areas ($18.4 billion in 2023). The next largest is the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA), which helps schools cover special-education costs ($14.2 billion in 2023). Through these programs and others like them — Title IX, Title VI, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 — the Department of Education holds schools accountable for complying with federal nondiscrimination laws.”

…

“The department was established by an act of Congress, meaning that Congress would need to pass another law to abolish it. Trump cannot just dissolve a cabinet-level agency with the stroke of his pen — and he’s extremely unlikely to find 60 votes in the U.S. Senate to eliminate the department either. Even if every Republican senator voted yes — a big if — Trump would still fall seven votes short.

At her confirmation hearing last month, McMahon admitted as much.

“Yes or no: Do you agree that since the department was created by Congress, it would need an act of Congress to actually close the Department of Education?” asked Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.

“President Trump understands that we’ll be working with Congress,” McMahon replied. “We’d like to do this right.”

The longer answer, however, is that the Trump White House can do a lot to alter the Department of Education without congressional approval. Already, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has cut dozens of contracts it dismissed as “woke” and wasteful, firing or suspending scores of employees while gutting the Institute of Education Sciences, which gathers data on America’s academic progress.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/why-trump-wants-to-end-the-department-of-education–and-what-will-change-if-he-succeeds-214316185.html