Terminating the Department of Education is a clear goal of Project 2025, which is rife with terrible ideas that would inflict harm on students and schools nationwide. However, this particularly bad idea has been a continual fixation of conservatives since the creation of the Department in 1979. Here are several reasons why eliminating the Department of Education (ED) is a foolish and destructive idea:

Early childhood, elementary and secondary education programs administered by the Department of Education are vital to our nation’s students

While the amount of federal P-12 education funding provided is much less than that supplied by states and localities, federal programs include those within ESSA Title I, II, III, and IV, all of which are vital in supporting students from low-income backgrounds, developing and training educators, and providing resources for English learners, alongside other traditionally underserved students. If conservatives succeed in defunding or outright killing these programs as they have previously proposed, schools in high-poverty districts would be drained of millions of dollars, crippling their ability to function and aiding in the explosion of educational attainment gaps that would leave millions of children at huge disadvantages.

Students with disabilities would suffer

Under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), ED is charged with providing and assisting with the implementation of $34 billion designed to provide individual supports for students with disabilities and resources to train and develop educators to ensure those students receive the free and appropriate public education they deserve. The creation and administration of educational plans for students with disabilities and learning differences is complex; without these resources, millions more students would go without the supports they need to succeed and thrive in school. Private schools are not required to admit or serve students with disabilities, but under IDEA, public schools are. While Project 2025 mentions that this work will be shunted into another agency, dramatically shrinking the capacity of the government to navigate these complex problems and removing oversight of IDEA will make educating students with disabilities more challenging than it already is.

Without student performance data or school accountability, essential resources and supports would not be allocated

All told, phasing out federal funds for all 13,000 school districts nationwide and letting states go their separate ways would be nothing short of disastrous, causing even deeper gaps in opportunity and achievement for our nation’s most vulnerable children. There are also federal assessment and accountability requirements that ensure schools are being evaluated by how they are serving all students but are also designed to be intentional about looking for populations within those student bodies who might be struggling and directing resources accordingly. There are already states that have not been meeting these federal requirements regarding transparency and data. Without the Department of Education doing that intentional work, even more states will fail to do the work, to the detriment of all students, but especially those who are traditionally underserved within their borders.

Students’ civil rights would be at risk

Abolishing the Department of Education also means that the Department’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) would cease to exist. Schools and colleges need to be assisted in, and held responsible for, creating safe and welcoming learning environments for all students. OCR has an essential role in holding schools and colleges accountable for when they violate students’ civil rights to be free from sex-based and race-, national origin-, color-, and religious-based discrimination, as outlined in Title IX and Title VI, respectively. Adding this work to the Department of Justice’s workload and restricting enforcement to only the court system as outlined in Project 2025 will reduce protections for students, diminish their sense of belonging on campus, lower completion rates, and let schools off the hook for providing supports.

Federal financial aid would be negatively impacted

The state of higher education would also be in jeopardy without the Department of Education. The Federal Student Aid office at ED administers millions of dollars in vital grant aid annually and administers the FAFSA, which is used nationwide by millions of students and colleges, and the Department also has oversight and distribution responsibilities concerning programs to support educator diversity, help students complete college, and provide on campus childcare, just to name a few. While Project 2025 suggests making Federal Student Aid a separate government corporation, we have an office doing this work already. The Department of Education is also charged with providing aid and technical assistance to Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Minority Serving Institutions, Tribal Colleges and Universities, among other Title III and V institutions serving traditionally underserved students. Without ED, critical financial aid for students and support for under-resourced institutions would be nonexistent, leaving millions of students unable to afford college and wreaking havoc with the viability of essential institutions.

College would be out of reach for many students, and student debt would increase

In addition to managing grant aid, the Department of Education also manages the federal student debt portfolio. Without the ability to borrow federal dollars to pay for college, millions of students will not be able to obtain higher education, and would be forced into private loans, which have higher interest rates and worse repayment terms for borrowers. Private loans don’t offer the income-based repayment and loan forgiveness plans like Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) and Public Student Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), which are administered by the Department. ED is the central hub and consumer protector for all borrowers navigating this system, eliminating it would yield an impenetrable mess for the average borrower, and leave them much worse off.

There would be no disaggregated student performance data or school and college accountability

The Department of Education is America’s education data hub, collecting, analyzing, and publishing essential information about how our students are performing, what is working, and what isn’t. Collecting this information disaggregated by race, gender, national origin, and other important legally protected classes goes hand in hand with ED’s role in protecting students and enforcing civil rights and yields insights that are key to the thousands of policymakers and administrators working to improve our system. The data is also key to enforcing regulations against predatory and unscrupulous behavior by for-profit colleges and protecting students from low-quality programs. Eliminating ED will increase the number of students harmed by poor-performing and bad-acting institutions, full stop.

It would be a waste of time, money, and expertise

While those who want to terminate the Department of Education assert that whatever civil rights protections and programs they may want to continue to enforce and fund can be done elsewhere, Project 2025 is clear that the federal role should be dramatically reduced, several aid programs should be narrowed or eliminated, and ED should be eliminated. Eliminating a central hub of expertise and fracturing the administration of related programs over several other agencies is designed to make them less effective for students and families and hinder cooperation and efficiency between civil servants, states, districts, schools, and colleges and universities. It also puts responsibilities on other agencies who don’t have expertise in those areas, have their own goals and priorities, and provides zero extra funding for hiring, training, or other important planning steps, let alone actual administrative action. While all of this is happening, rights aren’t being enforced, aid is being held up to students, states, schools, and colleges, technical assistance isn’t being provided to grantees, and student loan repayment applications aren’t being processed.

As noted above, we already have an agency in place to operate these programs and there is little political support for terminating existing educational programs, especially those with public bipartisan support like TRIO and Pell. Finally, the public doesn’t want this: a 2023 poll showed that when asking Americans which public policy priority should receive more government funding, education is the top response. A strong majority overall support increased governmental funding of education (65%), including 52% of Republicans; these ideas aren’t popular with Americans of all political persuasions.

These are just a few ways in which the Department of Education is an essential part of the federal government. The next administration MUST keep ED intact — for the future of America’s students and the entire country.