SOME DC government officials, private-sector education researchers and advocates with whom I spoke during the past week seemed unfazed by President-elect Donald Trump’s expressed desire to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education. During his campaign, he tried to disassociate himself from Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,” but many of the policy ideas he seems to be embracing for his second term — including this one — have been outlined or recommended in that 900-page document.
The section on public education written by Lindsey Burke, director of the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation, begins with this declarative mission statement: “Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated.”
Don’t look for solace in Trump’s selection of Linda McMahon, former WWE owner and director, to run the Education Department. While she may have served a short stint on the Connecticut State Board of Education, she — like other announced nominees — lacks any significant expertise in the field in which she is expected to work.
DC receives millions of federal dollars each year largely for low-income or disabled students and teacher development, according to government documents. Notwithstanding what’s at stake, DC Council Chair Phil Mendelson, who as head of the legislature’s Committee of the Whole oversees the government’s public education system, did not respond to my request for comment.
Paul Kihn, DC deputy mayor for education, declined my request for an interview to discuss what the elimination could mean for the District.
“The District is currently focused on supporting our federal partners with the peaceful transfer of power,” Kihn wrote in an email sent to me through his communications director, Adam Middleton. “We look forward to discussing our policy positions with the incoming administration at a later date.”
The email made no mention of the nearly 100,000 students currently enrolled in traditional and charter schools in DC; it made no mention of their teachers or their parents. Kihn also failed to refer to the thousands of college students who call the District home and rely on loans regulated by the Education Department.
Shouldn’t their futures have at least equal standing with the “peaceful transfer of power”? Shouldn’t parents have some idea of the strategic approach Mayor Muriel Bowser might deploy to ensure a well-funded public system of education?
Perhaps Kihn shares the perspective articulated by Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. In a recent newsletter, she offered that schools should not “brace for big cuts in federal funding.” She also asserted that even in the unlikely case the Education Department were to close, key programs like those financed under Title I (targeted to students from low-income families), the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and Perkins grants for career and technical education “could simply be moved to other agencies.”
Further, responding to the politically sensitive question of whether states could be ineligible for Title I funds if they teach CRT (critical race theory), Roza wrote “no,” noting that the change would require congressional approval.
When I spoke with her briefly by telephone earlier this week about her newsletter, Roza dismissed my concerns. She argued that DC would not be greatly injured. When I cited recommendations in Project 2025, she told me that Trump said during the campaign that he wasn’t connected with any of that.
Even if the scope of Trump’s agenda remains the subject of debate, the potential effect on DC looms large if the administration does scale back funding for education or attach unpalatable conditions.
“We get a significant percentage of our education spending from federal dollars. And should that dry up or should those dollars be used as a bartering chip to ensure that a national agenda is enacted on DC, I think that would mean we would have to cut programming and services to our young people that need it the most,“ Ward 5 DC Councilmember Zachary Parker told me earlier this week during an interview via Zoom.
In its fiscal year 2025 operating budget, the DC government has allocated nearly $3 billion to public education; that includes federal funding, according to government budget documents published on the website of the Office of the Chief Financial Officer. The lion’s share of the District’s spending on education comes from local taxpayers. However, the city continues to face financial challenges; even a modest reduction in federal funding could hurt the District.
“So, I am clear-eyed about the threat that comes,” continued Parker, who is a past president of the DC State Board of Education. “I am clear-eyed and wise enough to know that we should take Donald Trump at his word that he wants to explore eliminating the Department of Education.”
Parker asserted that abolishing the agency would be a mistake. He shared Roza’s assessment that such a move is easier said than done. It won’t happen overnight.
“That said, even having someone that is willing to undermine the functions of the U.S. Department of Education, if they can’t solely eliminate it, would still spell trouble for the country,” Parker said.
“There are two areas that concern me most: One is around the moving away from holding a high bar for what students should learn across the country. The U.S. Department of Education serves as a standardizing force across state lines, across county lines.
“[Second] if states were left to their own devices to come up with what students should learn, I think that would put vulnerable populations — Black and brown students, students with learning disabilities, et cetera — in a disadvantaged position,” added Parker.
Project 2025 was produced by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank long involved with Republican Party politics. Even as Trump sought to disconnect himself from the document as a whole, he has embraced some of the recommended policies — abolishing accreditation requirements for educational institutions, for example.
And while Roza may not think opposition to anything akin to CRT will be made a requirement for receiving federal education money, Burke in the Project 2025 manifesto recommended that “lawmakers should design legislation that prevents the theory from spreading discrimination. For K–12 systems under their jurisdiction, federal lawmakers should adopt proposals that say no individual should receive punishment or benefits based on the color of their skin.”
Suddenly they are interested in a colorblind world — no doubt quoting the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as they speak the phrase.
Burke further recommended “streamlining existing programs and funding,” sending money to states through “per-pupil allocations or in the form of [block] grants” that states can use for “any lawful education purpose” under that state’s law; removing the Education Department from the student loan regulation business while requiring borrowers to repay their debts in full and ending “time-based and occupation-based” loan forgiveness; and restoring Title IX regulations promulgated by Trump’s first-term Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, including defining “sex” so that it applies only to “biological sex recognized at birth” and strengthening “protections for faith-based educational institutions, programs, and activities.”
There are clear indications that the Heritage Foundation would prefer greater privatization of public education. In the Project 2025 document, Burke proposed that DC students be allowed to use a portion of education spending to create private savings accounts available for a variety of expenses including “personal tutors, education therapists, books and curricular materials, private school tuition, transportation and more.” Such accounts would be modeled after programs in “Arizona, Florida, West Virginia, and seven other states.”
Call that the-money-follows-the-students-policy on steroids. Or the beginning of the end of public education as we once knew it in the nation’s capital.
“That’s something I would be worried about,” one senior government official who requested anonymity told me during an interview earlier this week. “It is something they can impose on the District specifically, whether we want it or not.”
Interestingly, the current voucher program came as a deal the city made in 2003 with a Republican-controlled Congress. DC would get more money for its traditional and budding charter schools in exchange for the creation of a five-year pilot. The program was initially announced during a ceremony at the Heritage Foundation. That small Opportunity Scholarships Program was expanded and reauthorized in 2011.
Currently, the program allocation is “capped at $20 million annually and limited to students at or below 185 percent of the federal poverty line,” Burke wrote. “The maximum scholarship amount is $9,401 for students in kindergarten through eighth grade and $14,102 for students in grades nine through 12. The average scholarship amount is around $10,000, or less than half of the current per-student funding amount in D.C. Public Schools.
“Congress should expand eligibility to all students, regardless of income or background, and raise the scholarship amount closer to the funding students receive in D.C. Public Schools,” Burke wrote, noting that per pupil spending was nearly $23,000 as of 2020.
Those funds come mostly from DC tax revenues, however.
“All families should be able to take their children’s taxpayer-funded education dollars to the education providers of their choosing — whether it be a public school or a private school,” continued Burke. “Congress should additionally deregulate the program by removing the requirement of private schools to administer the D.C. Public Schools assessment and allowing private schools to control their admissions processes.”
Many residents, myself included, have had problems with the public charter school movement in DC. If Burke’s recommendation were implemented, things would be far worse.
“We already have a robust choice sector here and approach in DC, where nearly half of our young people are enrolled in charter schools, where they get to leverage their choice,” Parker said, pushing back against potential Republican intervention. He has asserted that the DC Office of the State Superintendent of Education should be exerting more control and oversight of local education agencies.
“While there are tensions that exist, whether it’s around enrollment or funding, I think our system by and large should be kept intact while we work to improve student learning and get schools the resources that they need. We’ve seen on a national level that the school voucher promises don’t always come to fruition,” added Parker. “I think it would be a mistake to upend our educational approach to explore vouchers in a significant way here in DC.”
Notwithstanding the name of the so-called school choice movement, the District’s elected officials and residents may have no choice about the future expansion of the voucher program in place here. Despite the city’s quasi-independent status, there is a history of congressional intervention in local matters. This week Bowser, Mendelson and the city’s chief financial officer, Glen Lee, appeared before the House Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, which has oversight of DC’s budget. The subcommittee chair, Republican David Joyce of Ohio, made clear the future holds many more such hearings, which can be a blessing and a curse.
Taking an optimistic posture, Parker insisted that “we do have a mechanism to make our voice heard, to work with our congresswoman on the Hill,” referring to DC Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton.
“It is a David versus Goliath. Primarily because our congressperson doesn’t have voting rights. And there are consequences to that,” continued Parker. “I just want people to be clear that we’re not helpless.”
That last bit may well depend, however, on whether District residents are prepared to fight for their rights — and the rights of their children to have the high-quality education they need and deserve.
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