Donald Trump is laying down plans for an eventful return to office in 2025. His goals range from stopping LGBTQ+ education in schools to rescuing TikTok from a nationwide ban.
The President-elect announced his roster for cabinet Tuesday morning. It includes John Ratcliffe as the new head of the Central Intelligence Agency, U.S. representative Mike Waltz at the helm of national security, and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee as the U.S. ambassador to Israel. He has yet to choose anyone to head the Department of Education, which he has proposed eliminating.
As far as policy goes, Trump has his eye set on big changes to the education system. For decades, the Department of Education has overseen public schools and sets regulations like civil rights protections. Trump wants to give control back to the states, allowing them to decide what to teach and how they teach it.
During Trump’s presidential campaign, he criticized the U.S. education system, saying increased federal spending on education over many decades has not proven to be beneficial and that the United States lags behind other many nations in academic achievement. Trump is likely to want to revert Title IX rules back to fewer protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity. He has issues with some of the content being taught in public schools, claiming that much of it is inappropriate for children.
During his campaign, the President-elect posted on his website, ”Rather than indoctrinating young people with inappropriate racial, sexual, and political material, which is what we’re doing now, our schools must be totally refocused to prepare our children to succeed in the world of work, and in life and the world of keeping our country strong, so they can grow up to be happy, prosperous, and independent citizens.”
Trump’s education plan also involves letting parents choose between public, private or religious schools; he and many Republican lawmakers also want to prioritize what they call “patriotic education,” emphasizing principles of liberty and freedom.
Trump’s agenda has raised several questions from supporters of the Department of Education. The main one: Can he actually do this?
The answer is yes, but not easily.
Dismantling the department would require approval from Congress. The Republicans won control of the Senate last week and will very likely win the House, although several House races are still undecided. But doing away with the Department of Education might not be a priority in the early days of his term, as he has pledged to deliver on other campaign promises.
Proponents of the Department of Education warn that dismantling an agency that has been in place for over 40 years would have severe implications. The department plays an important role in ensuring that students and educators are treated fairly. It deals with programs like student loans and education for students with disabilities and learning differences.
“Some of the role that the federal government plays that is crucial has to do with civil rights protections,” said Julie Marsh, who teaches education policy at the USC Rossier School of Education. “And so if we were to reduce federal oversight, it would affect the kind of enforcement of civil rights protections in schools.”
And it’s not only civil rights.
“There’s funding that’s at the federal level that’s dedicated to investigating any kind of complaints against discrimination or harassment based on protected classes like gender, race and disability, and so we might see less of those kinds of oversight and support,” Marsh said.
The GOP reformers believe that returning education to the states and local jurisdictions will bring policies for better learning closer to the people and even the families involved.
“While, you know, we may see education under attack, it’s also the source of our solution to some of these problems. And so we need to think — we need to think big, and we need to think long term about how schools can be part of advancing the society we all aspire to live in,” Marsh said.
With Trump set to take the oath in office in less than seventy days, we’ll soon learn what new shape education will take in our schools.