STATISTA: 2/3 of Americans Say Hands Off Dept. Education
by Felix Richter,
Mar 21, 2025
On Thursday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at shutting down the Department of Education. The order titled “Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities” instructs Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin dismantling her agency and return the authority over education to the states. This doesn’t come as a surprise, as shutting down the Department of Education was one of Trump’s campaign promises and he previously said that he had nominated McMahon to “put herself out of a job”.
McMahon herself was also aware of her task, as her first act as Secretary was outlining the department’s “final mission”. In a speech given on March 3, right after her confirmation, Secretary McMahon hit all of Trump’s talking points with respect to education, talking about returning power to the states and parents, removing red tape and eliminating “gender ideology”, “anti-American ideology” and DEI. While stopping just short of mentioning the outright elimination of the Department of Education, her repeated use of the word “final” made clear that she sees no future for the department she was just tasked with leading. “This is our opportunity to perform one final, unforgettable public service to future generations of students,” she addressed her new staff. “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.”
Earlier this week, democratic senators had addressed Secretary McMahon in a letter, urging her to stop the already apparent dismantling of the Department of Education. “At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, it is a national disgrace that the Trump Administration is attempting to illegally abolish the Department of Education and thus, undermine a high-quality education for our students," the letter signed by 38 senators said.
According to a recent survey conducted by YouGov and The Economist, the majority of Americans is also opposed to closing the Department of Education. Two thirds of respondents in the survey fielded March 16-18 said that the department should either be expanded (39 percent) or kept the same (27 percent). At the other end of the scale, 13 percent of respondents said that the department should be reduced, while 17 percent called for its outright elimination. This is another example of the Trump administration and the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) seemingly overstepping their mandate. According to the same survey, 46 percent of U.S. adults think that Trump’s cuts to federal agencies have gone too far, while 25 percent think the efforts have been about right and 17 percent think they haven’t gone far enough. Funnily enough, 34 percent of respondents think that DOGE itself should be eliminated – the highest share for any federal agency mentioned in the survey
You will find more infographics at Statista
This is interesting, but it doesn’t explain the why’s . I have mixed feelings about this agency. Why do people want to keep it? What do think it’s primary mission is? Why does the extreme right want to eliminate it? Thats the most important question.
ReplyDeleteThey handle student loans which could easily migrate elsewhere. What does concern me is that it is responsible for enforcing civil rights protections for minority students, including physically disabled, autistic, etc. It also concerns me that by putting all the curricula power in the hands of the state we will not only see the continued ( literal) whitewashing of history, we will see pure lies introduced into the curriculum - as Oklahoma is doing by having Trump’s claims of a stolen election put into the history curriculum as truth.
This is from Pew research:
Delete(The Department of Education) "...provides grants to help local public K-12 schools educate disadvantaged and disabled students; assists low- and middle-income college students; and funds work-study programs, rehabilitative services, school improvement efforts, education research and much more."
The way I am reading it, the Dept. of Education is a funding source. It handles a lot of money, making it a target for DOGE. But I don't think that's why Trump hates it. If think he sees it as an obstacle to MAGA.
Incidentally, red states depend a lot on Dept of Ed funds for their schools. Wonder how that will go down if they lose a bunch of funding?
It should be noted that one of the kinds of assistance to low income college students provided by the Dept of Ed are Pell Grants, which don't have to be paid back and have helped a lot of students.
DeleteAnyone who has had kids applying to colleges has had to fill out FAFSA forms. If they gut or close the Dept of Ed, who or what is going to process those?
"(The Department of Education) "...provides grants to help local public K-12 schools educate disadvantaged and disabled students; assists low- and middle-income college students; and funds work-study programs, rehabilitative services, school improvement efforts, education research and much more."'
DeleteConceptually, any/all of these programs, and others such as the civil-rights enforcement areas, could be moved to the states or to other federal departments. But the states don't have any extra money; and moving programs from one federal department to another doesn't reduce federal spending or federal employment.
I'm fine with eliminating the ED if it's done the right way, but I have zero confidence that is how Trump and the Republicans would do it. We existed as a country for 200 years without the ED, but you can't just cut it off cold turkey. It requires a 10-year transition so the states can prepare to take on the programs, responsibilities and funding that currently are handled by ED. But of course there is no political appetite for a 10-year transition. As soon as Democrats retake the White House in 2028, ED will be resurrected.
I believe the program now known as Pell Grants actually predates the creation of the Department of Education. I assume it lived under the old Department of Health, Education and Welfare.
DeleteI also have zero confidence that the Trump administration would eliminate ED in the right way. And is there a right way, and does it really need to be eliminated? Because it exists for a reason, needs change in 200 years. If we're just moving the responsibilities and functions to another department, what's the point? Of course the point with Trump and DOGE is to not spend the money on ED, to help fund tax cuts which are not going to trickle down. If it's all rolled back to HEW, that's actually three different categories not very closely related to one another.
DeleteAs to Democrats re-taking the White House in 2028, from your mouth to God's ears. But I'm not sure there'll be an election in 2028 the way things are going.
" it exists for a reason"
DeleteIf the reason is to improve educational outcomes, then...to put it mildly, it hasn't succeeded.
Maybe I'm too cynical, but I suspect the reason ED was created has more to do with quid pro quo to teacher unions for political support than improving education.
I do know that getting rid of the Dept of Ed was one of Project 2025's goals. Of course the president can't eliminate it entirely without congressional approval, but he can cripple it, which seems to be his strategy in a lot of areas.
DeleteJim, I know that at least one of your kids is a teacher. Does she feel that a teacher's union is a help or a hindrance? Locally at least, the union has secured good health insurance and a pension fund.
One group of students whom I am afraid would fall between the cracks if the D of Ed is dismantled are those with any type of disabilities.
Delete"Jim, I know that at least one of your kids is a teacher. Does she feel that a teacher's union is a help or a hindrance? "
DeleteI don't know how sophisticated her views on it are. Like a lot of union members in many walks of life, I think she sees some of her salary going to union dues and wondering what she's getting in return.
One important topic for her is graduate school. That is how an individual makes more money: by getting graduate credit hours, hopefully culminating in a master's degree. In her school district - and I think this is typical in this suburban area - the district does not pay for grad school tuition. Teachers are on the hook for it. I am surprised, because for corporate employees, at least those in a profession, it's a pretty common perk/benefit that the employer pays for grad school tuition, assuming the topic of study is related to the job. I've encouraged her to let her union reps know that this is an important issue for the next collective bargaining agreement. But I don't think she sees herself as someone who makes waves.
Overall, there is not a doubt in my mind that her and her co-workers' salaries would be lower without a union. But even with a union, her salary is not exactly extravagant. As a young teacher with a bachelor's degree, she makes enough - barely - to pay suburban rent and have an economy car to get her back and forth to work. She despairs of saving enough to buy her own place. (And paying for grad school would set back those plans by several more years.)
It's comparatively rare in the suburban districts for the teacher unions to actually go on strike. At the local school level, the teachers are quite collaborative with the principal and the other administrators, and seek to be the same way with the parents. (I would tend to be that way, too - just how I'm wired.) And if push came to shove, I don't think the local community would be super-supportive of the union if there was a strike. It's their tax dollars paying for teacher salaries. And most of us ended up living here because we want our kids to be in good schools - something that a strike disrupts. In general, I think unions are a tough sell in this neck of the woods.
There was recently a teachers strike in Denver and Boulder. Maybe the whole county. My French-Polish daughter in law with kids in Boulder public schools just shrugged and said “ How French “. The French love to go on strike . It was true when I lived in Paris decades ago and it’s true now - all professions and jobs.
DeleteJim, I’m sure it’s more expensive here than where you live, but here is the local teachers salary schedule for 2025
Deletehttps://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/siteassets/district/departments/ersc/employees/pay/schedules/salary_schedule_current.pdf
Anne, thanks for that schedule. I compared the upper-left number in the schedule you provided (presumably, the starting salary for a teacher with a bachelor's degree, fresh out of college) with the same data element in the district where my daughter works (a couple of suburbs over from where we live). Yours is nearly 40% higher.
DeleteCompared to our local district, where some of our kids attended elementary school and all of them attended middle school, yours is about 28% higher for that data element.
We live in a deep blue county in a deep blue state with a highly educated population. The residents here don’t mind paying higher taxes to have good schools and to attract good teachers. We have three empty bedrooms if your daughter would like to move states! Which I somehow doubt that she would do😉
DeleteRepublicans have been promising to put a stake through the heart of the Education Department for many years; but previously it wasn't such a pressing agenda item that Republican presidents were willing to spend political capital on it. But I believe the COVID era is what re-energized the movement at the grassroots era and put a MAGA spin on it. School COVID restrictions convinced a lot of parents that the education establishment did not have families' best interests at heart.
ReplyDeleteJim, They want to get rid of it because it has a mission to enforce civil rights laws for minority students - including gay and transgender. They know that if the states are responsible for enforcing civil rights laws, that most red states won’t bother to defend the civil rights of minority students.
DeleteDuring Covid time, when DeSantis banned masks in public schools, several school districts defied him. Like trump he used the threat of withholding funds to force them to do his will - even when the teachers and school administrators believed it was in the best interests of both students and teachers to use common sense and require masks at school.
Many tasks done by the Dept of Ed could be done elsewhere. But trusting the states to domone of the most important missions is naive at best.
DeleteJim, it seems that the plan isn’t to transfer funding and administrative activities to states but just to give them all the federal money in a block grant and let them do whatever they want - no accountability at all. No oversight.
Deletehttps://apnews.com/article/education-block-grant-trump-republican-8290df0a19b3274d8cbf29ae77d81f8a
"Jim, They want to get rid of it because it has a mission to enforce civil rights laws for minority students - including gay and transgender. "
DeleteI agree that transgender rights are a motivator for grassroots Republicans - especially the prospect of trans girls competing in girls' sports. And perhaps to some extent, the prospect of trans girls using the girls' washrooms.
To be sure: the right-wingers who are really, really motivated tl oppose gay or trans rights tend not to be in the public schools. They opt for home-schooling or, perhaps to some extent, Catholic schools. There is some controversy in Illinois right now where the Democratic-dominated government is proposing to impose some light regulation on home-schoolers; apparently Illinois is one of relatively few states with nearly no regulation of home-schooling. I get the emails from the pro-life groups to write to my local representative about the bill in question, but I have to say my sympathy for home-schoolers is not unlimited. (And honestly, I don't see that this is a pro-life issue - one of the reasons I've been picking my spots in recent years on pro-life advocacy.)
The data on some of the other agencies is interesting.
ReplyDeletePeople seem to be very supportive of keeping the Parks and Post Service right where they are.
Defense is a little more controversial with more wanted to expand it than to contract it.
CDC and ICE like Education have almost 40% of the people who want to expand it. Although both also have 20% of the people who want to reduce or eliminate it.
The EPA has about a third of the people wanting to expand it while another third wants to reduce or eliminate it.
DOGE has the most extreme views with a third wanting to expand it while another third wants to eliminate
I wonder how many people realize that the budget of our DoD is more than the next ten countries combined- including Russia and China. Although who knows if their published numbers are accurate. Ours aren’t because they don’t include the costs of our many “ black” programs, or intelligence agencies. Even without knowing the true cost, do we really need to spend more on our military?
DeleteSeveral years Trump was planning to close thousands of small post offices. At that time we were looking at houses on the eastern shore of Maryland as a possible retirement option. Lots of little towns, mostly empty homes because the towns were weekend and retirement mostly - not a large permanent population. But there were small post offices in towns that you couldn’t tell were towns - villages with maybe four- six houses, and two or three commercial buildings, including the post office. Then another, maybe 2-5 miles away. These little village post offices were only open a couple of hours each day. At the most people would have to drive 5 miles further to get to a town with enough population to have a post office open daily for the full day.,
But the congressman was ( still is) one of the very few Republicans from Maryland. He saved the tiny post offices. When trump was going to crack down on importing labor with a special visa from Latin America ( except for Mar-a-Lago and his vineyard in Virginia) this congressman asked that a large crabmeat packing house that used Mexican labor with visas be exempt from the crackdown because crabbing is a major business there and the biggest company ( Phillips) said that they would have to move the picking phase to Mexico. When crab is canned, there is a very slow, labor intensive process of handpicking out the tiny bits of cartilage - a job few want to do except imported labor from Latin America. The farmers in his district also imported seasonal labor. So the congressman did manage to save the visa program for his constituents. Not true in the blue counties though.
"Defense is a little more controversial with more wanted to expand it than to contract it."
DeleteYesterday's circus, in which our National Security Advisor invited a journalist into an unclassified chat session, to which our Secretary of Defense proceeded to publish plans to attack Yemen, beggars belief.
Perhaps the additional defense spending the people support, would be spent on whip-cream pies and bottles of seltzer.
They were using Signal to discuss military plans. This in itself was a ludicrous breach. The Atlantic’s editor published screenshots of the texting but says he withheld actual military data. YouTuber Sabrina Salvati claims Goldberg, himself, served in the IDF. It is quite possible that he redacted references to Israel which would have been interesting. I’m afraid that these people in power often resort to the convenient when it comes to keeping information secure. Hillary Clinton did it with her personal server. Now these hypocrites who disparaged Clinton are downplaying this event, as was to be expected. Musk’s “five things” compilation from every government employee in a single database would have been the biggest boon for data mining if compromised. Perhaps the biggest breach ever. It was a horror to any DoD employee, even a former one like myself.
DeleteThe editor of Atlantic is deliberately drawing fire now by releasing miIitary plans. Doubt that it will work but he’s obviously ready to sacrifice himself to try to shake up the spineless Republicans .
DeleteI’ve been in DC for more than 50 years. Neither my husband nor I were ever DoD employees but both of us worked for companies that were DoD or IC contractors for most of those years., This is the most egregious breach of security that I can remember. The Pentagon Papers were given to the WaPo by an anonymous source, whose identity remained secret until he was near death. Trump is trying to blow it off, but he himself has never been concerned about security breaches, especially those he committed himself. But he’s going to do what he can to destroy Goldberg and The Atlantic.
Goldberg didn't do anything wrong. He didn't spill the beans about the attack until it was over, and redacted info about the active VIA agent who was also included in the chat chain. It's a case of "shoot the messenger", he drew attention to the huge gaping hole in security. I've no doubt Trump will *try* to destroy Goldberg and the Atlantic. But the cascade of incompetence and malfeasance is piling up so much that neither allies nor enemies will take anything our government says seriously, except as an opportunity to turn it to their favor.
DeleteAll my colleagues were very fastidious about security. I’m not a fan of following rules in general but, in this case, I was. My facility harbored one of the most notorious Israeli spies who probably helped along Israel’s nuclear program. I can’t believe he wasn’t detected over such a period of time. I am suspicious that security was instructed under secrecy to look the other way. It was a way for the US to obtain plausible deniability while furthering Israel’s nuclear program. On the other hand, why was he arrested later? JFK apparently opposed a nuclear-armed Israel. His dad was an antisemite and that may have been a factor but people can be right for the wrong reasons. This adds the Mossad to the long list of entities that had strong motive to kill that US president. There’s no evidence we know of that someone beyond Oswald was involved but the motivations for so many were through the roof.
DeleteKatherine, Goldberg didn’t do anything wrong, but he’s still going to draw enemy fire. Several law firms have had that happen already because the had Democratic clients - he will use the DOJ ro litigate hoping to bamrupt The Atlantic or Goldberg or both.
Delete