Timeline: The Road to Taking Down the Department of Education
There have been consistent efforts to close the agency for 45 years. Here are key events and people who are part of that history
President Trump’s executive order to reduce the Department of Education to a handful of duties was no surprise. After all, Trump long ago made his intentions clear.
The Department will continue to administer Pell Grants, Title I funding, and resources for children with disabilities and special needs.
“Beyond these core necessities, my administration will take all lawful steps to shut down the department,” Trump said before signing the executive order surrounded by kids sitting at school desks.
Generally, the idea is to allocate federal money to states and let them administer DOE functions the way they prefer.
“States that run very well are going to have education that will be as good as Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland — those top countries that do so well with education,” Trump said.
National Education Association President Becky Pringle took aim at Trump and Elon Musk in a statement after news broke that the executive order would be signed Thursday.
“Donald Trump and Elon Musk have aimed their wrecking ball at public schools and the futures of the 50 million students in rural, suburban, and urban communities across America by dismantling public education to pay for tax handouts for billionaires.”
That exact quote was also part of a statement she made March 11 when the DOE announced layoffs to about half its workforce.
Trump’s executive order is, so far, the culmination of a 45-year effort by conservatives to kill the Education Department. Some examples:
Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan says in 1980 he would abolish the Department of Education if given the chance.
The Republican Party made abolishment part of its 1980 platform.
President Reagan called for “dismantling” the agency during his 1982 State of the Union address.
Lamar Alexander, after serving as secretary of education for President George H.W. Bush, made it a signature of his 1996 presidential campaign.
Several Republican presidential candidates, such as Rick Perry in 2011, and several GOP hopefuls in 2024.
Legislative attempts to kill the Education Department, perhaps most notably by Kentucky GOP Congressman Thomas Massie for the brevity of his 2017 bill, which simply said: “The Department of Education shall terminate on December 31, 2018.”
What follows are other other key dates and events in the last decade on the road to putting the DOE to sleep.
November 23, 2016
As he prepares for his first term, Trump nominates Betsy DeVos to be his Secretary of Education. DeVos is a controversial choice among teachers’ unions because she was chair of a group that advocated for more charter schools and using public money to help families pay for private school tuition. As Secretary of Education, DeVos also advocated to cut funding from the agency. She now openly endorses shutting down the Education Department.
May 4, 2020
The influential Heritage Foundation issues a report that calls for removing cabinet-level status for the DOE, and recommends transferring many functions to other federal agencies to save money.
June 23, 2022
The DOE proposes an expansion of Title IX to prohibit discrimination against transgender students. This would mean they could use the bathroom for the gender they identify with, and would have to be addressed by their preferred pronouns, among other things. The proposal outraged many critics of the agency. Revisions to the regulations were finalized in April 2024 and took effect about three months later, but were ultimately struck down in January 2025.
September 13, 2023
Trump announces his plan for “closing up the Department of Education in Washington, D.C. and sending all education and education work and needs, back to the states.” He also calls Biden and others running the country Marxists and communists.
April 2023
The Heritage Foundation releases Project 2025, which recommends eliminating the Department of Education.
February 13, 2023
Trump’s nominee to run the Department of Education, Linda McMahon, tells senators during her confirmation hearing that “I am really all for the president’s mission, which is to return education to the states.”
February 26, 2025
President Trump signs an executive order directing the heads of government agencies to review funds and grants given to “educational institutions and foreign entities for waste, fraud, and abuse.”
March 11, 2025
The Department of Education announces layoffs to about half its workforce of 4,133 employees. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon describes the cuts as vital to the department’s “commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers.” The cuts reduce the DOE to 2,183 employees.
National Education Association President Becky Pringle says vulnerable students will suffer the most:
Gutting the Department of Education will send class sizes soaring, cut job training programs, make higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle-class families, take away special education services for students with disabilities, and gut student civil rights protections.
March 12, 2025
The agency closes offices in Washington, D.C. and regional offices for “security reasons.” Employees learned the one-day closing would occur shortly before the layoffs were announced.
March 14, 2025
President Donald Trump signs an executive order directing the heads of seven governmental entities to eliminate the “non-statutory components and functions” of their agencies “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.”
March 20, 2025
President Trump signs the executive order to shut down as many functions as possible in the Education Department. It says in part:
The Secretary of Education shall, to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities while ensuring the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.
McMahon did not speak at the executive order ceremony, but released a statement after the event:
Closing the Department does not mean cutting off funds from those who depend on them—we will continue to support K-12 students, students with special needs, college student borrowers, and others who rely on essential programs. We’re going to follow the law and eliminate the bureaucracy responsibly by working through Congress to ensure a lawful and orderly transition.
The complete closure of the department requires congressional approval. Bills have already been introduced in the Senate and House to do that.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, also issues a statement, albeit only four words: “See you in court.”
I think it’s apparent that the DOE has not fulfilled its duties to improve the educational needs of our children. It’s to me, like having a democratic PAC inside the white house agencies. During COVID, how they treated our children, was the absolute turning point for me. I’m grateful to live in a state(FL) that has passed school choice, for my grandchildren. The fact that we’ve dropped to the 40th ranking among developed countries is embarrassing. We are graduating students unprepared. No wonder they need to further their education by going to college. The anti closure folks, keep talking about the rich being rewarded. Well, the rich already pay extra to educate their kids by sending them to private school etc. What about the poor? They have no alternatives. Something needs to change. With the DOE gone, the locals will have no one to blame when the parents come screaming .
You left out the most important date: 1979, the year it was created (Carter administration). Its mission was to overide the authority of local school boards in all 50 states to "improve" education quality and opportunities for girls, minorities, and non-English speaking students. It's been a COMPLETE FAILURE since its existence. In fact, you can plot the begining of the downfall of American education FOR ALL CHILDREN from its creation (unless your definition of success is fugly blue-haired teachers convincing illiterate prepubescent kids they were born in the wrong body and that all white people are evil).