Created in 1979 by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, the Department of Education was made to provide equal education access to all students in the U.S.. The Department of Education provides billions of dollars in funding to schools nationwide through various programs. The DOE is the federal government’s way of giving money to public schools, and it provides oversight by investigating civil rights violations.
President Donald Trump’s Administration has said they want to make massive changes to the department. Trump, on multiple occasions, has said he wants to get rid of the DOE. This, along with their wider goals of cutting back on the federal government’s bureaucracy, raises questions over the future of the department. Can the DOE actually get dismantled? What will happen if the DOE goes away? What is the future of federal education funding? What does this mean for education in Miami-Dade County Public Schools?
For starters, it is highly unlikely that the DOE will be dismantled. To fully get rid of it would require a supermajority in the Senate, meaning Trump would have to convince eight Democrats to side with him. This is highly unlikely, given the Democratic party’s support of the department.
What is more probable is Trump’s government defunding the DOE. This could involve the firing or resignation of long-term experts and bureaucrats as part of the new Department of Government Efficiency. This could be combined with a reduction of funding for programs like IDEA and Title One. Title One is a federal program that provides money to low-income schools. From that equity perspective, it is a program that ideally bridges the gap between lower-income and higher-income schools. These programs provide billions of dollars to schools across the country, and a reduction in funding could create even bigger budget shortfalls than already exist in public schools today.
Supporters of the administration say, however, that a smaller government does not necessarily mean one that provides fewer services.
“Our government’s very big. So, a lot of times. people initially say, ‘Oh, the government’s going to decrease in size. That means less services’,” Partner at K & L Gates and former OFCCP director in the U.S. Department of Labor Craig Leen said. “I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. I served in the government, and it could definitely be more efficient.”
Leen is also the co-chair of the DC Family Support Council, which works to oversee services provided to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in the District of Columbia.
For people who share Leen’s perspective, the incoming administration can make the department more efficient by downsizing it and granting more power to the states through changes to how federal funding gets to the states. This can mainly be accomplished by shifting from categorical to block grants. The major difference between the two is categorical grants provide more restrictions on where money given to the states can go.
This change would mean a reduction of federal oversight over federal money given to the states. Beyond this, block grants do not respond to the needs of a specific school or school district, leading to potential budget shortfalls and underfunding.
Another major issue is that states might use the newfound flexibility with their money for things other than their original intent. Money that was originally meant for Title One schools could now go to things like capital projects or school voucher programs. Leen, however, predicts that this situation will not occur.
“I still think the block grant is going to require the money to be used for education purposes. Yes, sometimes smart attorneys can figure out how to move it when you get pretty broad language. They might move it into a different function, like health, or justice, terms of criminal or civil justice or other areas. As long as there’s an education component to it,” Leen said.
However, this is only speculation, as the specifics are still unknown. This leaves districts in a precarious position since they do not have the time or money to plan for hypotheticals; this means that if sweeping changes are to come, many districts will not be prepared.
For MDCPS, this uncertainty leaves a lot of question marks. As one of the largest school districts in the country, MDCPS receives hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding. A change or reduction in this funding could create massive problems for the district.
For recently re-elected Miami Dade County School Board member Luisa Santos, the shift from equity to equality in education could hurt the schools that need the money the most.
“Title One is an equity program because you don’t just give it to every school. You give it to the schools that have the lowest income children. And if you don’t have a certain percentage of low-income children, you don’t get Title One. And if you follow the thinking of or eliminating anything that has an equity lens and only going with equal well, let’s say the money stays the same, but the rule change would significantly will be distributed amongst more schools, and therefore, obviously the schools that have been getting it In the past would lose out their numbers would definitely go down,” Santos said.
In Florida, one place this newly freed-up money could go to is private school voucher programs. This year, the state of Florida will spend $4 billion on its universal voucher program. Of that, $2.1 billion comes from public school funding. With a new administration that has historically been in favor of these programs, it is possible we can see federal funds diverted into these programs. Incentives like Florida’s Universal School Voucher Program take money out of public schools, leaving already underfunded districts even more so.
“In the long term, for every child that gets a voucher, those are children that were not on the public tax roll before, whether that’s at the state or federal level, means that unless the pool funding is severely increased, which I think we’re hitting the maximum stretch of what is feasible there. Inevitably it hurts every public school child,” Santos said. “What’s really concerning is that when you do universal vouchers that are not tied to income, this is not just for students whose family may not be able to afford a private education. It is. It could be Jeff Bezos’ kid.”
The future of the DOE remains unclear. In the early days of this administration, we saw a flurry of new executive orders, and so far, the only ones to affect education were related to gender identity and fighting “gender ideology extremism”.
For MDCPS, so much of the power is held with the state so on a local level, districts have to fight an uphill battle if they want to create policy contrary to the state.
A lot more power is going to be given to states over education funding, which means there will be a large variance in what these changes will mean. Here in Florida, people can likely expect the Republican-controlled state DOE to be open to the new policy pushed at the federal level.
“Whether you’re an individual, an elected official, a teacher, a principal, your voice matters and to not buy into the fact that things are just going to happen, How they happen. No, that’s not true. You should write to your representatives. You should write to your senators, and you’ve got a level of credibility that the general public doesn’t have. You live and breathe this every day. You’re a student,” Santos said.
