Last week, President Trump signed an executive order calling for the closure of the Department of Education. The EO states that “Closing the Department of Education would provide children and their families the opportunity to escape a system that is failing them.” It should be noted that it is because of the DOE that we know how education is performing.
In a recent appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, newly appointed Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon said, “The Department of Education does not educate one child; it does not establish any curriculum in any states. It doesn’t hire teachers; it doesn’t establish programs.”[1]
Secretary McMahon is correct, those responsibilities rest with states, school districts, or individual schools and teachers depending upon the nature of the system in which a student is educated.
Much of the recent rhetoric around the Department of Education from many sectors reveals how little most of us know of its history and functions. The DOE is often cited as having been founded in 1979 at the end of the Carter presidency. That was when the current structure was established, but a number of its functions predate that legislation by many years.
A recent story in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the elimination of over 90% of the employees of the Institute of Education Sciences referred to its history of education data collecting back to the time of Lincoln.
The initial Department of Education was established by Congress in 1867. It was renamed the Office of Education the following year. The purpose of this new entity was to collect data about education across the nation and regularly report those findings to Congress. Additionally, the Commissioner of Education was charged with evaluating how the fledgling Land Grants, which had been established under President Lincoln in 1862, were functioning.
The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was established as part of the Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1953, which was signed into law in 1949 by President Eisenhower. During the Carter administration that Department was cleaved into the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education.
As established, to paraphrase their website, the DOE has four activities:
- Establish policies relating to federal financial aid for education, distribute those funds, and monitor their use;
- Collect data and oversee research on America’s school and to disseminate that information to Congress, educators, and the general public;
- Identify major issues and problems in education and focus national attention on them;
- Enforce federal statues prohibiting discrimination in programs and activities receiving federal funds and ensure equal access to education for every individual.
The role of the department of education is not to educate a child, establish a curriculum, or hire a teacher. It is to give states and school systems the data they need to understand what is working and what isn’t, to conduct research to establish best practices for those entities to consider for their use, to protect the rights of all students, and to oversee federal financial aid programs.
These should all be seen as contributing to the common good. Federal student aid has historically been immensely popular on both sides of the aisle, and it has been one of our nation’s most successful investments in the future of its citizens.
The recent FAFSA debacle was a shameful black eye for the department, but in its defense, they were given neither the time nor the funds they said were necessary to overhaul the system. They were destined to fail. To me, their real error was not declaring that failure sooner. They have since made the improvements needed for the system to support students again. Now, the problem is there is almost no one in the DOE to assist students and their families when they need help.
If the goal of the Executive Order is “to enable parents, teachers, and communities to best ensure student success,” how will we know this has been achieved without the data collection and research required to measure those outcomes? How will we identify the critical issues affecting teaching and learning nationwide? Who will protect all students to be sure they have equal access and protections within our education systems?
We do need to improve the educational standards of our nation. Taking away the tools needed to do that work is a step in the wrong direction.
[1] Peter Aiken: “Student Loans: Education Secretary McMahon Discusses Trump Admin Moves” in Newsweek (23 March 2025).