Donald Trump wants to shut down the US Department of Education, saying at recent rallies that it should be disbanded to “move everything back to the states where it belongs”.

The idea of dismantling the education department has become increasingly mainstream, though it’s nearly as old as the department itself, which was created by Congress as a cabinet-level agency in 1979. Trump made similar promises on the 2016 campaign trail to either cut or hobble the department.

Eliminating it would require Congress to act, which could be an impossible feat, though several of Trump and his allies’ policy goals on education could be accomplished through presidential actions.

Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s rightwing manifesto for a potential incoming Trump administration, lays out how dismantling the federal education department would work, leaving behind, if anything, a husk focused solely as a “statistics-gathering agency that disseminates information to the states”, writes Lindsey Burke, the author of the education chapter and leader of Heritage’s education policy center.

The department’s elimination is one of many goals contained in the extensive conservative playbook that will inform a second Trump term. Project 2025 calls for privatizing education and driving out any programs related to LGBTQ+ youth or diversity.

“This playbook actually goes into detail that we’ve never seen before,” said Weadé James, senior director for K-12 policy at the Center for American Progress. It would have profound implications on civil rights, school funding and students’ progress – not to mention on the fate of public schools, she said.

“The striking part about all of this, too, is the Department of Education is actually the smallest of any cabinet-level agency. There are only a little over 4,000 employees within the department,” James said. “So we need to be talking about investing in the department, expanding the capacity of the department to do the work that it is designed to do.”

Burke, the Heritage author , declined a request for an interview. In a statement, the Heritage Foundation said that while it seeks to offer recommendations to the “next conservative president”, it “does not speak for any candidate or campaign”. And while Trump’s campaign has tried to distance the candidate from Project 2025, saying he has his own agenda to carry out, the former president and the project are aligned on much of their education plans.

During a speech to a “faith and freedom” conference this week, Trump railed against education rankings and spending, saying the US performs poorly despite money spent on students. Some states could do better without federal intervention, he said.

“We’ll cut our budget in half and not everybody’s going to be great,” he said. “I mean, [California governor] Gavin Newsom will not do a good job with education, so I don’t expect that out of him. And I don’t expect it out of certain other people … But many of the states, I would say 40 of the 50 states will do much better. And I’ll bet you 30 of the states will be phenomenal.”

Trump tells voters on his campaign site a few ways he would manage education:

• Cut federal funding for schools that are “pushing critical race theory or gender ideology on our children” and open civil rights investigations into them for race-based discrimination.

• End access for trans youth to sports.

• Create a body that will certify teachers who “embrace patriotic values”.

• Reward districts that get rid of teacher tenure.

• Adopt a parents’ bill of rights.

• Implement direct elections of school principals by parents.

School funding fundamentally changed

Education is primarily funded and overseen by state and local authorities in the US, but the federal government funds some elements of education and sets certain policies, which are then implemented locally.

As it stands now, schools receive federal grants targeted toward specific purposes, like aiding low-income students or students with disabilities. States implement these programs, often hiring people to ensure they comply with federal requirements.

Project 2025 posits various ways to put states in control of programs the federal government now funds and manages. Instead of directing how funds should be used, it generally says states should be given money with no strings attached to spend on “any lawful education purpose under state law”.

These “block grants” often receive pushback. And when states receive set amounts rather than funds based on specific needs, they can often fall short.

The project proposes phasing out one major program, Title I, over a 10-year period. The $18bn funding source supports low-income students. Instead, the project says states “should assume decision-making control over how to provide a quality education to children from low-income families”.

“Phasing that out is going to be very detrimental to that population of students who are already vulnerable for many reasons,” James said.

The Heritage Foundation also wants to eliminate Head Start, a program that funds early childhood education for low-income families, because it is “fraught with scandal and abuse”, according to a chapter on the Department of Health and Human Services. The Center for American Progress says in a new report that eliminating Head Start would reduce access and increase costs for childcare, hurting economic stability.

Beyond these major funding changes, the project – and Trump – both want to see expansions of school choice, like voucher programs that allow students to use money that would otherwise fund their seats at public schools to attend a private ones. Trump has said that he supports universal school choice, or the ability of any student to use taxpayer funds to attend whatever school they want. Trump also has a video on his campaign site dedicated to how he would help home-schooling families.

“What about those students who are going to remain in those public schools?” James said. “We need to change our rhetoric to really focus on investment in public schools, as opposed to vouchers that take away from public schools.”

The project cites Arizona’s expansion of vouchers to all students as a model, though the program there has been the subject of much scrutiny, including recently over costs.

LGBTQ+ and diversity issues attacked

Anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-diversity policies are sprinkled throughout the education recommendations in Project 2025 and in Trump’s platform. The project also supports passing a parents’ bill of rights to give parents more access to classroom materials.

The project proposes ridding education programs of any “gender ideology and critical race theory”, like a “non-binary” category in data collection or the ability of trans youth to participate in sports aligned with their gender. It also calls for parental approval for the use of names or pronouns other than those on birth certificates. And it wants to gut protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Project 2025 suggests the federal government put anti-LGBTQ+ policies in place in the schools it oversees as a way to set an example to state and local leaders.

As examples of what the project considers “critical race theory” that should be abolished, it mentions “mandatory affinity groups”, training programs for teachers that require them to “confess their privilege” or assignments in which “students must defend the false idea that America is systemically racist”. These activities are “actively disrupting the values that hold communities together such as equality under the law and colorblindness”.

The project also wants what remains of the Department of Education to gather data and report on programs or grants that spread “DEI/CRT/gender ideology”, how “family structure” affects student achievement, how pandemic aid funds were spent and how much money goes directly into the classroom from federal grant programs.

Trump has made it a regular part of his rallies to harp on diversity and LGBTQ+ issues in schools, too.

At the faith conference, he vowed to sign an executive order on day one that would cut federal funding for “any school pushing critical race theory, transgender, insanity and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content on to the lives of our children”.

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