President Trump came out swinging against the Department of Education when he took office in 2025. In his first major action against the department, on March 11, he enacted massive layoffs, reducing its workforce by almost half. Roughly 1,900 workers were either fired or accepted separation packages in just over a month. The remaining staff focused on tracking student achievement, providing student loans and grants, and enforcing civil rights laws in schools.

Opposition to Trumps policies cite the critical role the Department of Education plays in ensuring that all students, regardless of their socioeconomic background, have access to quality education. “The Department of Education was created to address disparities in education across states,” said Dr. Linda Martinez, an education policy expert. “Without federal oversight, we risk returning to a time when marginalized communities were left behind, with no guarantee of equal access to resources or protections.”

On March 20, he signed executive orders that returned educational choice to families, asserting that since its inception in 1979, the Department of Education had failed students, parents, and teachers. This is one of the most contentious parts of Trump’s actions for opponents. They worry that because most states have already passed legislation for parents to choose the schools they want their students to attend, the schools which are not in prime areas will be left out in the cold. Karen Johnson, a public-school teacher in Chicago stated, “Meanwhile, public schools in low-income area are left with fewer resources and less support, further widening the gap between the haves and the have-nots.”

As one of his most critical points, President Trump pointed out the ludicrous amounts of money spent on improving educational programs, then calling them a dismal failure. As just part of his evidence of this, he cited that 13 Baltimore, Maryland schools had zero students who tested as proficient in mathematics. However, advocates in favor of leaving the Department of Education as it is point out his cherry-picking of scores, claiming that there are systemic issues such as poverty and underfunding which are the root causes of poor performance in certain areas. “Blaming the Department of Education for these failures ignore the broader societal challenges that schools face,” said Emily Carter, professor of education at Stanford University. Carter also claimed, “We need more investment in education, not less, to address these challenges.”

Following his initial executive orders, Trump pointed to his predecessor, Joe Biden, and criticized him for wasting “more than $1 billion in grants focused on entrenching radical ideologies in education,” stating, “Biden’s Department of Education rewrote Title IX rules to expand the definition of ‘sex’ discrimination to include ‘gender identity.’”  This has caused significant controversy,  as critics of Trump argue that expanding the definition of sex discrimination to include gender identity was an important step to protect LGBTQ+ students from harassment and discrimination.

Meanwhile, he put forward his choice for the Secretary of the Department of Education with directives to take steps toward closure. However, today, federal judge Myong Joun, a Biden appointee, not only blocked President Trump’s efforts to dismantle the department, she ruled that the fired employees must be rehired and that there would be no transfer of the management of federal student loans or special education functions outside the department. This effectively reversed the progress of the president in his efforts to dismantle the department.

Senator Maria Lopez, an opponent of Trump’s policies claimed, “The Department of Education is not perfect, but it plays a vital role in ensuring that all students, regardless of where they live, have access to a quality education.” This is a directly oppositional statement to President Trump’s claim that, “The experiment of controlling American education through Federal programs and dollars — and the unaccountable bureaucracy those programs and dollars support — has plainly failed our children, our teachers, and our families.” Currently, President Trump’s desire to eliminate the Department of Education seems unlikely. Not only has the court ruled it unconstitutional, but several polls have shown that most voters oppose the idea.