Sign up for Chalkbeat’s free weekly newsletter to keep up with how education is changing across the U.S.
President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order soon that would seek to close the U.S. Department of Education.
A draft of the executive order viewed by Chalkbeat tells newly confirmed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities,” to the maximum extent allowed by law.
But crucially, the draft order acknowledges legal limitations. In fact, only Congress can close the department or reassign its duties. That means the order could fall short of accomplishing Trump’s stated goal of shutting the department down, yet still force changes to its role and size when it comes to issues like special education, civil rights, and more.
The Wall Street Journal first reported on the draft order and said sources indicated the order could be signed as soon as Thursday. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt called the story “fake news” on the social media platform X. She said the order would not be signed Thursday but did not dispute its description of the order itself in her post on X.
The White House press office did not provide additional clarification.
The order calls the federal role in education a failed experiment and cites recent sobering national test scores as evidence the status quo is not working. “To ensure America’s future competitiveness and prepare its future leaders by restoring excellence in our schools, the Federal bureaucratic hold on education must end,” order says.
At the same time, the executive order says federal funds should be withheld from programs that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, a move that would increase the federal government’s involvement in local decisions about curriculum and teaching.
Getting rid of the department would fulfill a campaign promise that goes back to Trump’s first administration, and has been widely anticipated by conservatives who feel that the department is an inefficient bureaucracy that’s ideologically hostile to their priorities.
The draft was labeled “pre-decisional,” meaning it could still change. In a message to department staff shortly after she was sworn in, McMahon laid out a “final mission” for the department that called for significant changes that would “profoundly impact staff, budgets, and agency operations” but stopped short of describing the elimination of the department.
Public education advocates condemned the effort even before Trump signed the order. They fear the executive order is a prelude to major funding cuts, that critical expertise will be lost, and that students will lose civil rights protections.
“This is part of a broader attack on public education and public institutions,” said John King, a former education secretary and now chancellor of the State University of New York, at a press conference Thursday.
Here’s what we know so far.
What does the U.S. Department of Education do?
The Education Department employs about 4,200 people who oversee major federal funding programs. These include Title I, which supports low-income schools, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, which provides funding for special education and lays out the rights of students with disabilities.
The department also provides the framework for school accountability, helping states identify low-performing schools and provide extra resources to improve academics. The department handles most civil rights investigations in schools and can pressure districts to make changes to policies.
The department also funds and disseminates research on educational best practices. However, the future of this work is uncertain after the U.S. DOGE Service — the cost-cutting enterprise run by billionaire Elon Musk — canceled hundreds of contracts and grants.
The department also oversees federal financial aid programs and student loans.
States already exercise significant control over issues like funding and teaching.
Can Trump close the Education Department by executive order?
No. Only Congress, which established the department in 1979, can get rid of it. Congress also would need to sign off on plans to move functions that it has assigned to the Education Department to another agency.
However, the administration could phase out programs that aren’t congressionally mandated, reassign or fire staff, leave positions vacant, or dramatically change the mission of certain offices, as the administration is already doing with the Office for Civil Rights.
The order comes as the Trump administration undertakes an unprecedented initiative to overhaul the federal bureaucracy through executive actions. With help from DOGE, it has fired thousands of workers, abruptly terminated grants and contracts, and essentially shuttered both USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, agencies created by Congress, by abruptly stopping spending and placing staff on leave.
Many legal experts say refusing to spend money appropriated by Congress is illegal, and that if it continues, it could bring about a constitutional crisis.
At her confirmation hearing, McMahon promised to work with Congress on any overhaul. Even with Republican control of both chambers, most observers do not believe there are enough votes to actually close the department.
So far, the Republicans who control Congress have not challenged Trump’s approach.
Many administration actions have been challenged in court, and judges have ordered some spending restored and some fired workers returned to their jobs.
How would Trump’s order change the Education Department?
The draft executive order doesn’t provide a lot of details.
Most proposals for getting rid of the department call for moving required functions to other departments: civil rights enforcement to the Department of Justice, special education to Health and Human Services, student loans to the Treasury Department.
Mike Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a center-right education think tank, predicted such a plan would amount to a “nothing burger.”
“It’s moving boxes around and changing some reporting lines,” he said.
Tiffany Justice, co-founder of the conservative parent group Moms for Liberty, fears that simply dividing up different Education Department functions would mean people hostile to the conservative agenda would maintain their influence in the federal government.
“I want to kill woke,” she said. “I don’t want to carve it up and create a hydra. I want to make sure that we’re actually making the changes that need to happen.”
Jon Valant, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, said he has yet to see a substantive argument for moving mandated functions to other departments.
“It feels like the only reason to do that is to use it as part of a symbolic attack on the Department of Education,” he said. “You have pieces you have to preserve because it’s in law and because you would upset a lot of people if it went away.”
What would happen to IDEA and special education?
The draft executive order doesn’t address this.
At her confirmation hearing, McMahon floated the idea of moving IDEA to Health and Human Services, but said she would have to study that idea more after she started the job. She also told senators that funding for special education — which has never met legal requirements — would be protected.
Disability rights advocates are especially concerned about moving IDEA out of the Education Department. They said it feels like a step backwards to a time of institutionalization and exclusion.
“IDEA is an education law,” said Robyn Linscott, director of education and family policy for The Arc of the United States. “It’s not a social service. It needs to live where the other education laws are enforced. Otherwise it’s saying that students with disabilities don’t deserve an education.”
There are practical concerns as well.
If special education is based on Health and Human Services and civil rights enforcement moves to the Department of Justice, advocates fear there will be less coordination and less expertise to resolve these cases.
What about other federal funding for K-12 schools?
The draft executive order directs McMahon to withhold federal money from any program engaged in discrimination, “including illegal discrimination obscured under the label ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ or similar terms.”
This aligns with other executive orders Trump has signed seeking to end diversity programs in the federal government and barring schools from teaching what he deems “radical indoctrination.” The Education Department has also threatened the state of Maine with loss of federal funding if it doesn’t bar a transgender high school student from participating in girls' sports.
In a Dear Colleague letter, the Education Department already warned schools they could lose federal funding for diversity practices that Trump officials believe amount to illegal discrimination. That interpretation is being challenged in court as both contrary to case law and so vague that schools can’t reasonably comply, although the department released a subsequent document seeking to clarify its position.
The order does not otherwise address federal funding, which represents about 10% of K-12 spending nationwide and much more in high-poverty communities.
Funding could continue at current levels even without an Education Department or be cut through the congressional budget process even if the Education Department continues to exist.
Some conservatives want to see federal funding consolidated into block grants and for states to have much more flexibility in how to spend that money. A group of state schools superintendents from Republican-led states called for just that approach in a letter sent to McMahon earlier this year that was first reported by The 74.
Many public education advocates fear that giving states too much flexibility will leave vulnerable students unprotected.
“There is a reason we had to create the Department of Education,” said Keri Rodrigues, co-founder of the National Parents Union. “We had to ensure that students had equitable access to education.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.
