The Department of Education Is in Limbo. Let's Kill It.
Congress should now turn its attention to abolishing the unnecessary federal education bureaucracy.
The fate of the U.S. Department of Education is currently in limbo. President Donald Trump came into office promising—among other things—to rid us of this unnecessary federal bureaucracy. Democrats, closely aligned with teachers unions, vowed to prevent him from doing anything of the sort. The Trump administration has offloaded many of the department's responsibilities and dismissed staff, but without a congressional vote to abolish the department, those decisions have been challenged in court. As it now stands, the bureaucratic behemoth has been hobbled but not yet disposed of.
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Many Good Reasons To Dump the Department and None To Keep It Around
As I pointed out in March, there are good reasons to get rid of the Department of Education. Education remains primarily a responsibility for families and the groups and businesses with which they work, followed by local and state governments. The Department of Education admits its role is limited, conceding, "of an estimated $1.15 trillion being spent nationwide on education at all levels for school year 2012-2013, a substantial majority will come from State, local, and private sources. This is especially true at the elementary and secondary level, where about 92 percent of the funds will come from non-Federal sources."
With most money and effort for teaching kids derived from families, schools, publishers, and agencies located far from Washington, D.C., there really isn't a strong argument for keeping the department around. As Frederick Hess, the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), wrote in January: "Calls to abolish the department aren't nearly as radical or threatening as much of the media coverage suggests. The Department of Education doesn't educate anyone or run any schools or colleges. It's a collection of 4,000 bureaucrats who mostly manage student loans, write rules, oversee various grant programs, and generate paperwork."
The Department Is Pointless, Unconstitutional, and Intrusive
Worse, the department really doesn't have any constitutional legitimacy whatsoever. Writing in March, Thomas A. Berry, director of the Cato Institute's Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, noted that "the vast majority of functions carried out by the Department of Education are not authorized by the Constitution. That is because the Constitution grants the federal government only limited, enumerated powers, none of which encompass education policy."
Berry went on to argue that government officials have no right to enforce unconstitutional laws or engage in activities unauthorized by the Constitution, and so the Trump administration has an obligation—shared by its predecessors—to sidetrack the department and work toward its dissolution.
The problem is, lack of constitutional authority aside, the Department of Education was created by an act of Congress: the Department of Education Organization Act, passed and signed by then-President Jimmy Carter in 1979. "As a presidential candidate in 1976, Carter promised the National Education Association that he would push for a separate education department, a goal the NEA had sought for a century," Mark Walsh detailed for EducationWeek in December 2024. "In return, the nation's largest teachers' union made the first presidential endorsement in its then-117-year history."
Having won their prize, teachers unions have remained the department's main constituency ever since. It does little to educate, but its rule-making and grant-writing play a major role in shaping education and limiting local autonomy through D.C.-based arm-twisting and bribery.
"The federal government uses a complex system of funding mechanisms, policy directives, and the soft but considerable power of the presidential bully pulpit to shape what, how, and where students learn," Brendan Pelsue wrote in 2017 for the Harvard Graduate School of Education's Ed. Magazine. That's a lot of power for those who control the department's bureaucracy. They won't easily surrender that power.
Created by Legislation, the Department Needs To Be Killed by Congress
So, while the Trump administration has tried to live up to its promise to rid us of this unnecessary and intrusive federal bureaucracy, its moves have been challenged in the courts. Almost half of department employees—over 1,300—were shed from the payroll through buyouts and layoffs. Each action or dismissal has resulted in lawsuits, with one judge ordering the federal government, twice, to reinstate fired workers.
The Trump administration drags its feet on doing so in hopes that higher courts, especially the Supreme Court, will reverse the lower-court orders. It won a significant victory when the high court ruled that federal judges have been overusing nationwide injunctions that apply to people and policies far beyond their districts.
"The decision could change the course of education-related cases that have been trickling through the courts since Trump returned to office in January—and affect how legal challenges are brought against the administration in the years to come," commented Brooke Schultz for EdWeek.
Ultimately, though, Trump has been trying to undo by executive order a department that was created by law. The Department of Education is unconstitutional, but it's been in place for over 40 years, has many defenders, and really needs to be killed off the same way it was brought into existence.
The Cato Institute's Neal McCluskey, who wants "to end federal intervention in education, leaving power over education where it belongs: with the people and states," points to three bills currently awaiting broader support in both the House and the Senate. The simplest proposals are A Bill to Terminate the Department of Education, from Sen. Rand Paul and To Terminate the Department of Education, from Rep. Thomas Massie, each Republicans from Kentucky. Both would pull the plug on the Department of Education, effective December 21. 2026. Sen. Mike Rounds' (R–S.D.) Returning Education to Our States Act and Rep. Nathaniel Moran's (R–Texas) Orderly Liquidation of the Department of Education Act would redistribute the department's current responsibilities elsewhere. All would meet the requirement to use legislation to undo legislation.
For weeks, though, all of the energy in Congress has been devoted to debating and passing the massive, and massively expensive, One Big Beautiful Bill Act which is seen as flagship legislation for the Trump administration. The president signed that into law on Friday.
Hopefully, that means lawmakers will now have the energy and attention to spare for otherwise reducing the size, scope, and intrusiveness of the federal government. A great place to start would be the passage of legislation that would get rid of a federal Department of Education that we've never needed, and that does nothing but limit local autonomy and experimentation in education.
