When Project 2025 Came to Town:  Part 2 - How to Destroy America's Education System in 10 Easy Steps

To all of the parents, students, educators, administrators, and other Americans out there who care about public education, BUCKLE UP! Our nation's education system is about to take a very bumpy ride. The ultra-conservative movement behind Project 2025 includes plans for nothing less than a complete overhaul of American education, and Trump is already getting started.

Last week, we discussed one of Project 2025's primary goals: dismantling the administrative state. Today, we'll drill down a little deeper into this concept by focusing on its plans for one specific department: the Department of Education.

The Plan to Transform American Education 

1. Eliminate the Department of Education
   There has been a lot of confusion over whether Trump plans to eliminate the Department of Education. Let me clear that up for you. He does, and he will. According to Project 2025, "Setting education policy on the right track long term would require sunsetting the U.S. Department of Education altogether." Remember, the Department of Education has nearly five thousand employees and receives approximately $100 billion each year, which is distributed throughout the states and funds countless programs to help students. 
2. Eliminate state education agencies
   It's important to understand that the ultra-conservative movement behind Project 2025 also wants to eliminate state education agencies. They see these agencies as nothing more than "Big Brothers" that monitor state education activities and report back to the federal Department of Education. Since they want to end all federal involvement in education, Project 2025 will also eliminate the state-level agencies that help enforce its policies.  
3. Give parents Education Savings Accounts
   America's public school system was established in the 1840s. Today, public schools are supported by a combination of local tax revenue, state, and federal funding. However, Project 2025 wants eliminate that federal funding stream completely, and disperse it to parents as individual Education Savings Account. I know that giving parents money and more control over their children's education may sound like good ideas, but take a moment to consider the consequences.
   
   Parents would be free to enroll their children in any private, religious, or online school with federal funds, starving public schools of much needed resources. This is the heart of Project 2025's plan for the future of American education. Parents would have to make sure to be good stewards of the money because once it runs out, there will be no federal assistance to complete their child's education. And they better make sure they don't get scammed by fake schools because there will be no federal education department to investigate fraud and abuse claims. 
4. Block grant any remaining funding to the states
   As we discussed last week, Project 2025's push to reorganize the federal government is the type of states' rights campaign that would make the Confederacy proud. They see the federal government as the enemy and think all its funding, programs, and employees are useless partisans. This is why they want to divide the remaining education funding among the states. Every state already receives education funding through a number of federal programs. Project 2025 wants to eliminate these programs and replace them with an equivalent lump sum of money that each state can spend as they see fit. This would allow states to opt out of federal education programs, which have been tied in the past to funding. It would also put a nail in the coffin of any nationwide education standards.  
5. Disperse remaining federal programs
   Congress created the Department of Education in 1979, consolidating various programs and agencies that were spread across the federal government. Project 2025 wants to roll back the clock 45 years to before that happened by dispersing these programs and agencies across the government again. Without a Department of Education, where will all the programs go?
   
   • • Some will move to HHS
       Educational programs that serve low-income students or students with disabilities will be moved to the Department of Health and Human Services. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., will be responsible for determining which programs, agencies, and employees to keep. 
   • • Some will move to DOD  
       Educational programs that serve students who live on military bases or in Washington, DC, will be moved to the Department of Defense. (Remember, the District of Columbia is a federal territory, not a state.) Pete Hegseth will be responsible for determining which programs, agencies, and employees to keep. 
     • Some will move to DOI
       Educational programs that serve Native Americans will be moved to the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the Department of Interior. Doug Bergum will be responsible for determining which programs, agencies, and employees to keep. 
     • Some will move to DOL
       Educational programs that serve adults will be moved to the Department of Labor, including all programs and agencies that deal with higher education. Lori Chavez-DeRemer will be responsible for determining which programs, agencies, and employees to keep. 
   • • Some will move to DOJ
       Educational programs involving civil rights will be moved to the Department of Justice. Pam Bondi will be responsible for determining which programs, agencies, and employees to keep. Any existing investigations into civil rights violations will be immediately terminated, and the DOJ will take over any future investigations. 
       • Project 2025 also calls for revoking the congressional charters of the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) because it claims they are partisan organizations. It recommends the DOJ begin Investigating both organizations for evidence that they have abused federal funds for political purposes.
       • Project 2025 recommends that the DOJ create a "private right to action" for parents. This would allow parents to sue schools and educators directly instead of only being allowed to file complaints against them with the Department of Education. 
       • Finally, Project 2025 demands an end to "negotiated rulemaking" which is a rule requiring the Department of Education to seek input from community stakeholders to learn about potential consequences before setting new policies. 
   1. • Some will move to DOC
        Educational programs involving data collection will join the Census Bureau at the Department of Commerce. Howard Lutnik will be responsible for determining which programs, agencies, and employees to keep.
        
        In the future, all educational data collection must follow these rules:
        • Stop replacing the word "sex" with "sexual orientation or gender identity." 
        • Stop adding a "nonbinary" category to federal forms.
        • Add "family structure" as a new demographic category so its effects on educational outcomes can be measured. 
        • Stop measuring educational outcomes by graduation rates and income levels for recent graduates.
6. Stop considering "disparate racial impacts" 
   This refers to efforts started by the Obama Administration to combat the disproportionately high percentage of students of color and low-income students in special needs programs around the country. 
   
7. Remove barriers to charter school funding
   Charter schools are required to meet certain requirements and follow certain regulations in order to qualify for federal funding. Project 2025 wants to remove these barriers and give charter schools the same funding as regular public schools. This would give parents more control over which schools their children attend, but it would also siphon much needed money away from public schools. 
8. There's no such thing as free lunch
   This one is so unbelievable that I'll let the authors of Project 2025 speak for themselves: "Since the 1940s, federal lawmakers have greatly expanded these meal programs, creating an entitlement for nearly all students, regardless of family income levels, and have turned the meal programs into some of the most wasteful federal programs in Washington." The ultra-conservative movement behind Project 2025 wants to save money by refusing to feed hungry children if their family incomes are above the poverty line. Since their new version of the school lunch program would serve low-income students only, it will be moved to the Department of Health and Human Services and run by RFK, Jr.
9. Kill federal students loans
   Project 2025 wants to eliminate all federal student loans and student loan forgiveness programs. To be clear, they aren't against student loans altogether, they just don't want the government involved in any way. They want to return to the days when private banks and companies handled student loans. They plan to stop offering new loans, and want to offload the existing loans to a for-profit corporation. They also do not believe in loan forgiveness, so they plan to eliminate all forgiveness programs, including Borrower Defense to Repayment for military service members, Closed School Discharge for people whose schools no longer exist, and Public Service Loan Forgiveness for state and federal employees. They even want to take things a step further by finding a way to prevent future Presidents from creating new loan forgiveness programs!
   
   These actions wouldn't just hurt students, they would also be detrimental for our nation's colleges and universities. Project 2025 has a few additional suggestions that will also be harmful for higher education:
   • Attack accreditation: Project 2025 wants to remove the barriers to creating new educational institutions. Any new institution seeking to qualify for federal funding or student aid funds must meet certain requirements and be evaluated by a recognized accreditor. This is how we stop people from scamming students and parents by not providing a quality education. Project 2025 wants to get rid of the current accreditation system and investigate the existing accreditors for antitrust violations. 
   • Support competency-based education: Project 2025 wants to support alternatives to the traditional credit hour-based system that determines accreditation and eligibility for federal funding. This will open the door to online, work-at-your-own-pace, and other types of educational programs, ensuring that these programs are eligible for federal funding, grants, and scholarships. 
     
   • Tax foreign gifts and investments: Project 2025 claims that America's top colleges and universities are receiving millions of dollars in foreign gifts and investments that are neither reported nor taxed. It wants to require schools to report these donations and tax them. It also implies that these gifts could be threats to national security.
   • Drastically reduce funding for indirect cost: According to Project 2025, "Currently, the federal government pays a portion of the overhead expenses associated with university-based research." They want to cut this funding in half by only contributing enough to match private funding sources. Basically, colleges and universities would be responsible for raising half the funds for these costs on their own, which will inevitably lead them to cut programs with a more direct effect on students in order to compensate for the revenue loss.
   • Overhaul "area studies" programs: Unfortunately, Project 2025 does not provide much detail on what it means by "area studies." Assuming they are speaking in literal terms, this would include departments and interdisciplinary programs like Latin American Studies, African Studies, Asian Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, European Studies, etc. (It is unclear whether this would also include African American Studies, but I guess we will see.) The complaint here is that these academic programs are indoctrinating students with Leftist/communist rhetoric. I'll let the authors of Project 2025 explain their proposed solution for themselves: "the next Administration should promulgate a new regulation to require the Secretary of Education to allocate at least 40 percent of funding to international business programs that teach about free markets and economics and require institutions, faculty, and fellowship recipients to certify that they intend to further the stated statutory goals of serving American interests." It sounds like faculty in these programs will need to make some sort of loyalty pledge certifying that they will only teach topics aligned with “American interests,” as defined by the Trump Administration. We shall see.
   • Eliminate GEAR-UP: GEAR-UP stands for Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs. It is a grant program that was started by the Obama Administration to helps low-income students get prepared to succeed in college. However, according to Project 2025, "It is not the responsibility of the federal government to provide taxpayer dollars to create a pipeline from high school to college. GEAR UP should be eliminated, and its functions should instead be handled privately or at the state and local levels ..."
10. Bring back vocational training
    Generally, I support vocational training and trade schools, but there are several reasons that this push by Project 2025 worries me. First, when combined with eliminating GEAR-UP, pushing vocational training seems to be part of a coordinated attack on education in low-income communities. To be clear, their proposal isn't to build new vocational training centers in high-income areas, it is to convert the nation's worst performing public schools, which are all coincidentally in low-income areas, to vocational training centers. Rural and urban students will be the ones most affected.
    
    We are on the path to return to what used to be called "tracking." This is when students are assigned to either a college-prep or trade "track" by their teachers in elementary school and then steered down that "track" through high school. When we tried tracking 50 years ago, the data showed that students on the trade "track" were given less funding, less attention, and fewer resources. Also, tracking determined their class schedules, so even if students on the trade track earned stellar grades, they often lacked the necessary prerequisites to get into college. According to Project 2025, vocational training programs would fall under the direction of Lori Chavez-DeRemer at the Department of Labor. We will see how she implements this.

Implementing Their Plan

• Since it is not legally possible to eliminate a cabinet-level department by executive order, Trump needs Congress to pass legislation. U.S. House Rep. Thomas Massie introduced a Bill to Terminate the Department of Education (HR 899) at the beginning of this congressional session. The one-sentence bill says simply, "The Department of Education will terminate on December 31, 2026." It has not passed yet, but watch this space. It will likely be the last step in this whole transformation process. 

• Trump has issued several executive orders addressing parts of Project 2025's education plans. For example, the  Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity EO signed on January 21, specifically calls on the Attorney General and the Secretary of Education to "issue guidance to all State and local educational agencies that receive Federal funds, as well as all institutions of higher education that receive Federal grants or participate in the Federal student loan assistance program" about eliminating their DEI and DEIA practices to comply with the 2023 Supreme Court decision outlawing affirmative action. 
• The Expanding Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families EO signed on January 29 is a key part of Trump's efforts to enact Project 2025's education plan. It establishes what it calls "education freedom" as a top priority of this administration and gives the Secretary of Education 60 days to deliver a concrete plan for dismantling the department, creating education savings accounts, sending block grants to the states, and dispersing remaining programs to other departments just as Project 2025 outlines. 
• The Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling EO signed on January 29 lays out key topics Trump does and does not want discussed in America's schools. I wrote a detailed analysis of this executive order when it was first released called "There's More Hiding in Trump's 'Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling' Executive Order Than You Think." Take a few minutes to read it and learn about the details. Basically, Trump threatens federal funding to any schools, educational programs, or teacher training programs that teach about DEI or support the "social transitioning" of trans students. In addition, it lays out a plan to inject "patriotic education" into America's schools and historical landmarks through a series of televised lectures on American history. 
• The Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports EO signed on February 5 threatens federal funding for any schools or organizations that do not separate sports teams and locker rooms for girls and boys and do not restrict team membership by a student's "biological sex defined at birth." 
• In addition, Linda McMahon's first speech as the Secretary of Education on March 3, 2025 was ominously titled "Our Department's Final Mission." She gave away the whole ball game when she said, "The Department of Education’s role in this new era of accountability is to restore the rightful role of state oversight in education and to end the overreach from Washington. This restoration will profoundly impact staff, budgets, and agency operations here at the Department. ... This is our opportunity to perform one final, unforgettable public service to future generations of students. I hope you will join me in ensuring that when our final mission is complete, we will all be able to say that we left American education freer, stronger, and with more hope for the future." Say goodbye to the Department of Education, folks. Start getting prepared for whatever comes next. 

When Project 2025 Came to Town: Roadmap

1. Dismantling the "Administrative State"
2. How to Destroy Education in America in 10 Easy Steps
3. Health and Veterans' Affairs
4. Immigration and Border Patrol
5. Defense, State Dept., Intelligence Community, and Homeland Security
6. Foreign Policy and USAID
7. The Justice Department and the Media
8. Housing and Urban Development
9. Labor and Transportation
10. Interior, Agriculture, and Energy 

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