As the Harris-Walz campaign signs are (perhaps reluctantly) taken down like the last of the summer leaves desperately clinging to their branches, President-elect Donald Trump is preparing for his return as the President of the United States. Chief among Trump’s sweeping policy changes is his aggressive approach toward education. Trump has repeatedly promised to eliminate the Department of Education and “cut federal funding for any school pushing Critical Race Theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children.” A never-before-seen overhaul of America’s public education could be on tap as Inauguration Day approaches—but what does this mean for LM students?
Trump has completed assembling his “dream team” cabinet, pulling Republicans from a wide spectrum of ideologies and generating plenty of controversy in the process. Trump selected Linda McMahon, former co-founder and CEO of WWE. His pick has sparked criticism after McMahon was named in a sexual abuse lawsuit filed by five former “Ring Boys” in the WWE for concealing and failing to prevent sexual abuse. As a result, McMahon’s selection as Secretary of Education could face pushback from the Senate, but if she is eventually confirmed, one of her primary goals will be to shut down the Department of Education and “send all education work and needs back to the states.”
Should the Department of Education be abolished, many of its powers would transfer to the states for their own individual decisions. States could choose to provide less financial aid to students. Such a massive transition could also delay financial aid due to confusion at the local level in school districts.
Luckily, this is unlikely to harm LM in a significant way, as only about one percent of LMSD’s total revenue in the 2023 fiscal year was from federal funding, which includes the Department of Education’s financial aid through programs such as Title 1 and the school-based ACCESS program. These federal programs provide money to schools based on their financial needs and the number of students who are disabled and/or economically disadvantaged and are expended on a wide range of services such as transportation for students, supplies, textbooks, and other necessary items for any school. While one percent of our total revenue may appear low, it is still more than $3 million in funding that would be vulnerable to manipulation by the local government. Fortunately, we live in an area that is unlikely to significantly block financial aid. However, not every district shares that privilege.
The School District of Philadelphia, the eighth-largest school district in the nation, receives a massive 12.1 percent of its total revenue from federal funding—a whopping $461 million. The disparity in funding between this district and LMSD is due to the difference in our financial needs. While only nine percent of LMSD students are economically disadvantaged, a whopping 69 percent of students share the same status at the School District of Philadelphia, according to U.S. News & World Report. Even a slight alteration of funding for the urban district could mean pay cuts for staff and even less resources for its students. Furthermore, beyond K-12, public universities largely rely on federal funding for their research and development.
Even if Trump and McMahon fail to shut down the Department of Education, other programs regarding schools could be in jeopardy. Recently, many seniors have likely filled out the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) form, which helps millions of students attend colleges and universities each year by using money provided by the federal government to help disadvantaged students pay for higher education.
During Trump’s first term, his administration repeatedly proposed budget cuts for this program, including a nearly eight-percent cut in 2020. If Trump succeeds in carrying out these cuts in his second term, it would greatly reduce the federal aid given to lower-income families hoping to send their children to college.
Student loans are another important issue on the table for Trump and McMahon, as multiple attempts to make student-loan forgiveness harder to receive were made during Trump’s first term. Such changes could increase funding for the federal government and lead to improvements in other areas—including education—but it could leave millions of graduates entering the workforce in severe debt.
Other possible changes include Trump’s plan to ban transgender women from competing in women’s sports and restrict federal funding for schools who “promote the concept of sex and gender transition, at any age.” Such sweeping changes would eliminate the opportunity for transgender women and girls to compete in organized sports, even if they have undergone transgender hormone treatment, and would significantly impact the experience of transgender students at LM, which currently allows all students to participate in athletic activities “in a manner consistent with the student’s gender identity.” Should Trump succeed in this nationwide ban, this district policy could be overturned, and transgender students could lose the ability to participate in school sports.
LM allows students to choose to use bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity, and to be referred to by a student’s chosen name or pronouns, even without parental approval. If Trump were to follow through on his campaign promises, LM students could expect to see federal pushback against LM’s comparatively more accepting policies, as LM may be pressured to remove mentions of gender identity from sex-ed curriculum and to edit district policies to align with federal requirements.
Trump has also stated that he would “not give one penny” to any schools with mask or vaccine requirements. While LM has no such requirements, a nationwide edict against them could lead to a rise in disease transmission nationwide. This statement supports the premise that Trump plans to use federal funding as leverage against schools with policies that don’t align with the administration’s priorities.
The potential abolition of the Department of Education and Trump’s general education priorities are motivated by a few broad perspectives prevalent in the Republican party. The first is that federal funding has failed to provide quality education. Despite taking up four percent of all government spending, the Department of Education has failed to prevent a recent historic fall in reading and math scores on the NAEP Long-Term Trend Assessment, a test administered to nine, thirteen, and seventeen-year-old students every four years.
This belief, as well as the Trump administration’s stated goal of cutting government bureaucracy, may be guiding Trump’s priorities when it comes to education. Over time, the Department of Education has evolved drastically from its origin as a lower-level department in the late 1800s when it served solely to collect data regarding education for policymakers and teachers. Now, it has become a cabinet-level organization and its mission has changed to providing financial aid and fighting civil discrimination in schools. In order to abolish the Department of Education, Trump would have to take it through Congress first. Even though Republicans now hold a majority in both houses of Congress, such a bill would be unlikely to receive the necessary sixty Senate votes to pass. However, it is important to remember that in the current political climate, almost anything is possible.
But another reason for Trump’s proposed overhaul of American education, as described on the Trump-Vance campaign website, is the belief that many schools across the nation have become too “woke,” meaning they have “devolved into left-wing indoctrination centers,” and that “students are underperforming, mental health is worsening, in-school violence is spiraling out of control, and political activists in the classroom are teaching our children a one-sided and distorted view of American history.” This perspective motivates many of the changes Trump hopes to make, regardless of whether he is able to repeal the Department of Education.
During a complete 180-degree turn at the Commander-in-Chief position, it is easy to overreact and attempt to map out every detail of the political landscape. But in Trump’s overhaul of the federal government, few certainties are left. There is no true way to predict what the outcome of the next four years will be—both on a nationwide level and here at LM—but we can speculate and find out what works and what doesn’t. What can be assured is that there will be plenty to learn and observe over the next four years, regardless of whatever political affiliations you may hold.
