With rumors growing that Trump plans to sign an executive order which would effectively dismantle the Department of Education, this factsheet highlights the likely deleterious effects for millions of students across the country.
Families who rely on federal grants to support their children’s access to an education would be most affected by the dissolution of the agency. This includes the millions who draw on programs such as the formula grants under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which seeks to improve the learning outcomes of children with disabilities.
Who Will be Harmed?
Here is an overview of which initiatives and programs will fall apart from the dissolution of the department of education..
Students With Special Needs.The Department of Education’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) ensures that students with special needs and disabilities attain the resources necessary to have a successful learning experience. The Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), provides discretionary grants to states and local governments for students with disabilities. These grants help in providing not only support services for children and families, but also training for personnel who want to help children with special needs. There is already a shortage of resources for students and teachers who need more help (including teachers).
According to the National Education Association, 7.5 million students, which comes out to 15% of the entire student population, are dependent on $15 billion of funding offered through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
Low-Income Communities: Title 1 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act provides federal support to school districts for low-income communities. This support primarily takes the form of funding and support programs such as reading specialists and creating smaller class sizes. The Center for American Progress estimated that about 180,000 teachers could lose their jobs, and that 2.8 million students from poor families could be impacted.
Student Loan Borrowers: Under Title VI, the Federal Student Aid (FSA) program conducts oversight of third party lenders to ensure that both lenders and schools meet eligibility requirements. During these reviews, FSA ensures that lenders operate in good faith with borrowers. Without the Department of Education, where the FSA is housed, lenders will be free to further exploit the already abusive student loan system.
An unregulated system has led to a lack of financial security for students. Private student loan companies like Navient have “systematically and illegally failed borrower at every state of repayment” because their predatory lending practices turn students into victims of effectively life long loans.
Homeless And Migrant Students: The Office Of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE) coordinates with state and local governments to ensure that students of all backgrounds have access to educational services. These programs support migrant and even homeless students. Even under the first Trump Administration, the Office of Migrant Education (OME), a sub-unit of OESE, fulfilled its responsibility to support migrant students with access to a high school education or equivalent certification and postsecondary education programs. Grant directors of OME’s College Assistant Migrant Program (CAMP), which helps non-American students enroll in college, have reported an 83% college freshman retention rate with nearly 75% of all of its recipients obtaining a bachelor’s degree. Getting rid of the Department of Education means that these populations that have historically not had access to quality education would have an even greater learning gap.
Protected Classes: The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) helps enforce Title IX, which prohibits “discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance.” Accordingly, OCR investigates allegations of sex and gender-based discrimination at educational institutions. It’s a critical role, especially considering the prevalence of sexual violence at educational institutions across the country. In fact, even elite universities such as Princeton have been found in violation of Title IX. Elimination of this crucial responsibility would leave so many victims of violence with no recourse.
Non English Speaking Students: OESE and the Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) have invested millions of dollars in grant funding to develop students’ English proficiency. OELA’s primary function is to help improve students’ proficiency in English for academic and professional purposes.
Marginalized Communities: The Department of Education has several offices intended to help students from marginalized communities. They have offices for Native American students, Latine students, Black students, as well as an office for HBCUs. Some examples of significant initiatives these offices pursue are: funding for HBCUs, funding for Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs), resources to increase the number of African American educators, and consulting Native American tribes on Department of Education grants and programs in the federal budget.
Teachers Unions: Charter Schools are expected to be promoted in place of the current public school system that the Department of Education underpins. Charters have a far lower union density than public schools: 70% of public school teachers are unionized compared to only 11 percent of charter school teachers. This low union density is sustained by the notoriously aggressive union busting at charter schools.
The Labor Movement: Public school teachers make up a core flank of the organized labor movement, which means that an attack on their profession would reverberate as an attack on the organized labor movement as a whole. In recent years, public school teachers unions have been shown to have one of the highest rates of representation by unions out of the entire American workforce. Roughly 1 in 5 unionized workers is a public school teacher. This large share of the unionized workforce has been paralleled by an organizing militancy that has placed teachers at the forefront of the growing enthusiasm for organized labor. The #RedforEd movement in 2018 led to an impressive upswing in work stoppages led by teachers. According to Lyon et al., in their analysis of BLS data, “At least 78% (379,000 of 485,200) of workers participating in large work stoppages in 2018 were public school teachers, including many who were not unionized.”
This high union representation rate translates into political power. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and National Education Association (NEA), are top contributors in election cycles. The vast majority of these donations go to the Democratic party, with whom these teachers unions have formed a strong political alliance.
By sapping the public school work force of its workers, charter schools threaten to weaken one of the core pillars of organized labor, and therefore threaten the labor movement as a whole.
Who Stands To Gain?
Here are some parties who will benefit from a United States without the Department of Education
Charter Schools: Getting rid of the department of education entails a heavy dependency on charter schools in place of public schools. Shortly into his second term, Trump signed an executive order promoting the expansion of school choice programs throughout the country. This reliance on charters is expected to continue as the Department of Education is gutted.
Venture Philanthropists: Bill and Melinda Gates, the Walton Family, the Arnolds (an “Abundance Agenda” funder), as well as, of course, the Koch network, are some of the most passionate donors and advocates when it comes to charter school expansion.
Banks/Creditors: Charter school expansion is often dependent on financialization. While these schools still use public funding (that they divert from public schools), they have also gone into credit markets to fund their operations. This tendency is only to become more likely with a government that is against public spending in principle.
As was the case with Chicago Public Schools’ budget crisis, loans taken out by charters can eventually result in piles of debt. Once in debt, charters become a drain on public coffers: taxpayer money goes into the pockets of bankers instead of paying for textbooks, or school lunches.
There is plenty of evidence that charter school expansion broadly, and not just in Chicago, will become another way that financiers derive rent from privatizing social institutions.
Bill Ackman, the Pershing Square hedge fund investor, got into the game years ago by starting the Turner-Agassi Charter School Facilities fund alongside fellow billionaire Stewart Rahr. Through this fund, 122 schools have been built across the country. The fund has turned a profit by “easing or selling new schools to charter school operators.”
Perhaps for this reason, Charter school expansion has been supported by financiers, big banks, and hedge fund billionaires.
Here is a snapshot of the ways that financiers are supporting the charter push:
- In 2013, JPMorgan Chase created a funding initiative for high performing charter schools.
- Michael Bloomberg donated $100 million to charter schools in New York City.
- The aforementioned Bill Ackman, the manager of hedge fund Pershing Square Capital, has donated tens of millions of dollars into charter school expansion alongside Stewart Rahr
- In New York, hedge fund manager Daniel S. Loeb has poured over $5 million into the pro-charter group New Yorkers for a Balanced Albany.
- Hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones co-founded the first all-boys charter school, the Excellence Boys Charter School, in 2004
- “Greenlight Capital’s David Einhorn, Two Sigma’s John Overdeck, Och-Ziff Capital’s Daniel Och and Appaloosa Management’s David Tepper” backed nonprofit donations to charter schools alongside Tudor Jones.
Hedge fund and financier contributions to the expansion of charters goes back decades and the total amount of money spent on it likely numbers in the billions of dollars. This is only a sample and more research is needed in this area.