What is to become of the Department of Education (DOE)? Trump promised to get rid of it, and Elon and Vivek say they will follow through and “delete” it. What does the Department of Education do, anyway? And will it be missed?
First off, what does the DOE not do? It does not choose textbooks or curricula, and it does not hire teachers. That has for a long time been done on the local or state level. What DOE does, broadly, is administer various entitlement and grant programs, passing down federal funds to local schools and the states. That those funds are often contingent on schools following various social justice dictates, such as Title IX on discrimination in school sports and activities by sex, is where the rub lies. (See Project 2025, below.)
A good place to start in understanding what DOE does is with Sen. Mike Rounds’s (R-SD) Returning Education to Our States Act (S. 5384), which seeks to…
