BALTIMORE — Some of the first questions that were brought up after President-Elect Donald Trump made his desires clear—to get Washington’s influence out of schools and hand control over to the states—included:
What happens to special education funding? Or Title I funding for low-income families? What about enforcing civil rights in schools? Those are all things the Department of Education oversees right now, a department the president-elect wants to eliminate. The decision isn't only up to Trump. Congress would have to repeal the law that created the department back in 1979.
"I think that there's a lot of fear-mongering about what it would mean,” Tim Villegas with the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education told us. "In the short term, if the Department of Education is dismantled, all of that funding would probably just go somewhere else and be administered somewhere else in the federal government."
For example, the department’s Office of Civil Rights, which enforces things like Title IX protections against sex discrimination in schools, could be housed under the Department of Justice.
Villegas’ organization is primarily concerned with making sure students with special needs continue to be protected under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which provides federal funding for the education of children with disabilities.
“Congress still has to appropriate those funds, and IDEA has never been funded at the 40% that it was promised. It’s only ever reached 14 or 15% at the most. Our fear, if we do have any, is that it’s possible those funds could be zeroed out. But there’s no indication that this administration would actually do that.”
Dr. Jade Wexler from the University of Maryland explains how IDEA, Title I under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), and other fundamental education laws are independent of the department.
"They're separate laws that were created by Congress that are not eliminated even if the Department of Education is eliminated, as long as Congress continues to appropriate money for these different programs."
Those laws actually predate the Department of Education, which was established in 1979. Before that, there was the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, or the “HEW.” Dr. Philip Burke, a professor of special education in Maryland, used to work in that department and saw how education was handled by the federal government back then.
"Frankly, it got very little attention. The "e" in HEW was a very tiny "e," not capitalized at all. It was a very small part of a big agency which controls Social Security, eventually Medicare […] When it got moved into the Department of Education, it gave much more visibility, which is a good thing."
Still, even today, the federal government typically only provides about 10% of a state’s school funding.
"Even if all federal funding—poof, just went away—there will still be funds available for learners with disabilities, assuming that they would honor the federal guidelines in the law,” Villegas from the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education said.
What is concerning to some is the potential to lose the oversight of the federal government. The Department of Education measures states’ compliance with laws like IDEA, which was originally created because states were historically not serving students with disabilities properly.
If the department were to be eliminated, “They [the states] don’t have any or they have minimal accountability. So then there’s uneven accountability across the states,” Dr. Wexler explained.
“If left to other agencies or states, they do not have experience in doing the work of making sure that our girls can participate in sports, that our students have equal access and equitable access to the programs they need. We don't want those important Title IX and Title I protections to be handed off or to go away,” Paul Lemle, the president of the Maryland State Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, said.
Lemle also worries that any perceived threat to the public education system could hurt efforts to bring more teachers into the field. He says there are about 120,000 job openings in public education right now.
"When we're talking about kicking our programs and our schools around like political footballs, we really undermine confidence in our public schools,” “Lemle said. “We want people to know what a great job it is. The attacks make it much harder."
But something that the experts we talked to say should reassure educators and families is the fact that laws like IDEA and ESEA historically have had bipartisan support.
“Anything can happen, but it’s unlikely they would want to reduce the amount of money going into that,” Dr. Wexler said.
“We love our jobs; we love our kids. We think that sentiment is shared across the aisle,” Lemle said.
Still, many, including Dr. Burke, believe it would be a “huge mistake” to get rid of the department.
“If you really look at what goes on around the world, every country has figured out that education represents its future. In other words, the ability of its workforce to be well-educated, to actually be able to participate in government, to be successful economically—they really see education as a major investment. I think that one of the tools they use to be able to have a role in that, is to have major federal agency as part of government,” Dr. Burke told WMAR-2 News. “All major industrial countries have the equivalent of a Department of Education. It may not be called that, but basically there’s a central role for education in the central government, which, I think, is really critical for the success of a nation, to be honest with you.”
Another big part of this conversation is about the culture in schools, especially by way of the curriculum. The Department of Education doesn't determine what schools can and can't teach; it's actually against the law to do so under the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It's up to individual states and local school boards.
For example, even with the Common Core, those standards were adopted independently by each state. The Obama administration at the time just incentivized it by offering grants to states that implemented Common Core, so there can be some indirect influence from the federal government, but it cannot directly control a school's curriculum.
The Maryland State Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment on this topic.
The Maryland Association of Boards of Education sent the following statement:
"We have been following public education headlines closely while focusing on our core work of supporting local school boards in their efforts to champion excellence in Maryland public education. As you may already know, we provide this support of school boards and of local school board governance through professional development, advocacy, and member services. That said, we will continue to monitor this and other public education-related issues moving forward in efforts to help keep local MD school boards well informed and are eager to learn more specific details in the days and months ahead."
