On the morning of March 11, 2025, 45th and current president Donald J. Trump would announce that he had cut the workforce of the Department of Education by half, and was working on either dismantling the Department, or weakening it heavily. The reason that he gave was that the Department of Education had “been overrun by Marxists and [far-left] Radicals,” and that he would "facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities.".

All of this has some people wondering, “What does the Department of Education do?”. According to Math Teacher Daniel Bracken, “The Department mostly deals with school curriculum and scholarships.” he also states that, “without the Department, some students that should be able to get into really good colleges could get blocked.”.

Most of the budget from the Department of Education goes to Federal Student Aid, which is about $150 billion or 59%, second in line are Title 1 Grants, with $82 billion or 30.5%, and third is the usage for Special Education, which the Department used about $20.7 billion, or around 7.6% of the budget. 

The “Common Core Standards” style of teaching, which created a general educational standard for a student's education from K-12 was created through the Department of Education, as was the controversial “No Child Left Behind” Act, which started the use of standardized tests in schools to see which schools needed more money.

Originally, most of the stuff that the Department of Education did was done by the state and any governors that it had, which meant that states could decide their own curricula. 

The idea of dismantling the Education Department isn’t a recent thing, as Former President Ronald Reagan didn’t like the Department and also wanted it gone, in part to his Small-Government Neoliberalism. In 2012, Republican Presidential Candidate and Libertarian Ron Paul ran in part in opposition to the Department, citing that the Government shouldn’t get its hands in Public Education and that the Tuition Rate for college has risen in cost at 3x the speed of inflation.

The Department of Education was created by former President Jimmy Carter on October 17, 1979.