Education

The Department of Education is being gutted from the inside

In March 2025, Trump signed an executive order directing the dismantling of the Department of Education. Congress created the department and its programs by law, so it cannot legally be abolished without legislation. But the administration found other ways to hollow it out.

DOGE terminated 64 research contracts worth roughly $900 million, including studies on literacy instruction and special education transitions. The department’s headcount dropped from roughly 4,000 to about 2,000 employees through layoffs and buyouts.

The Office for Civil Rights was hit hardest. At least 240 OCR attorneys were laid off in March 2025, cutting the office by 40%. More than half of its 12 regional enforcement offices were closed.

In October 2025, another 466 workers were cut, including staff overseeing special education and Title I funding. If every planned cut goes through, the civil rights office would shrink to 62 people, just 10% of its size when the administration took over.

A GAO report found the department spent over $28 million on its own firing process. The office that investigates discrimination complaints from parents has largely stopped functioning. A federal judge ordered the administration to reverse the layoffs, but compliance has been slow and incomplete.

The funding freeze

On July 1, 2025, the administration withheld $6.8 billion in federal education grants that Congress had already appropriated. The Office of Management and Budget said the seven affected programs were “under review” to root out a “radical leftwing agenda.” Twenty-four states sued, and ten Republican senators wrote a letter urging the administration to release the money.

About $5 billion was eventually unfrozen in late July 2025. The pattern continued. By January 2026, the administration had disrupted more than $12 billion in education funding during its first year, targeting programs labeled as promoting “gender ideology” or “DEI initiatives.” As of May 2026, another $2 billion remains withheld.

The budget fight in Congress

Trump’s initial FY 2026 budget proposed a 15% cut to the Education Department, including a plan to merge 18 smaller programs worth $6.5 billion (teacher training, rural schools, school safety, and homeless student support) into a single block grant funded at just $2 billion.

Congress pushed back. In February 2026, lawmakers passed a spending package that maintained level funding for virtually every existing K-12 program, including Title I at just over $18 billion. The vote was 217-214 in the House.

Title I funding has been flat for two years running. IDEA special education funding got a nominal boost to roughly $14.9 billion, but once previously separate programs were folded in, districts’ actual special education funding is flat.

The FY 2027 proposal went further. Trump proposed billions more in K-12 cuts while maintaining the push to consolidate programs and reduce the department’s footprint. The maximum Pell Grant for low-income college students, currently about $7,400 per year, would be cut to $5,700 under earlier proposals.

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Voucher programs are draining public school budgets

Roughly 30 states now have some form of voucher or education savings account program. Eighteen of them are universal, meaning any family can use public money for private school tuition regardless of income. Six states passed universal programs in 2023 alone.

The federal voucher program

The Educational Choice for Children Act (S. 292 / H.R. 833) was included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Trump signed on July 4, 2025. It creates a federal tax credit for donations to nonprofit scholarship organizations that fund private school tuition.

Here is how the program works:

• Donors get a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for contributions to scholarship-granting organizations
• The credit is capped at $5 billion per year from 2026 through 2029, rising to $10 billion annually after that
• Families earning up to 300% of their area’s median income qualify
• Scholarships can cover tuition at private and religious schools, plus tutoring, transportation, and disability services
• States must opt in. The IRS launched the opt-in process in December 2025
• The federal program will bring private school choice to at least four new states that had no existing state-level program

This is a tax expenditure, not a direct appropriation. That means every dollar of credit claimed is a dollar of lost federal revenue. It does not appear in the education budget. It does not come with the accountability requirements that apply to public school funding.

State-level damage: the Arizona warning

Arizona expanded its voucher program to cover all students in 2022. The results are a cautionary tale documented by ProPublica:

• The original cost estimate was $65 million. Actual cost in the first year: $332 million
• The program now draws roughly $1 billion per year from taxpayer funds
• Enrollment jumped from about 11,000 to over 90,000 students
• The state faced a $1.4 billion budget shortfall, much of it driven by voucher spending
• ProPublica found that most voucher recipients were already in private schools, meaning the state was subsidizing families who had already left public education

Texas: the newest and largest program

After years of failed attempts, the Texas legislature passed a voucher program in April 2025 and Governor Abbott signed it into law. The program launches in the 2026-27 school year with these terms:

• Most families receive $10,000-$10,900 per student per year
• Home-schooling families receive $2,000
• Students with disabilities can receive up to $30,000
• The state budget cap is $1 billion for the 2025-2027 cycle
• State budget experts project costs escalating to $4.8 billion by 2030

Rural Texas districts are especially vulnerable. They have no private school alternatives nearby, but they still lose per-pupil funding when families take voucher dollars elsewhere.

Vouchers raise prices, not access

A 2024 Princeton University study found that when Iowa expanded its voucher program to universal eligibility, private schools raised tuition by 21% to 25% on average. When eligibility was limited to certain grades, prices rose 10% to 16%. The voucher does not make private school more affordable. It gives private schools a reason to charge more.

NEA research found that voucher programs hit rural schools hardest. Rural districts lose funding when students leave but cannot reduce fixed costs like building maintenance, transportation, or minimum staffing. The money leaves, but the obligations stay.

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Book bans have become normal

PEN America’s 2024-2025 Index of School Book Bans recorded 6,870 instances of book bans across 23 states and 87 public school districts. Nearly 4,000 unique titles were affected, including works by almost 2,600 authors, illustrators, and translators.

Since 2021, PEN America has documented nearly 23,000 book ban instances across 45 states and 451 public school districts.

The most banned titles include A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, books in Sarah J. Maas’s Court of Thorns and Roses series, and Jodi Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes.

PEN America’s research found a clear pattern: state laws are driving the bans. In Florida and Iowa, where state legislation created removal mandates or legal liability for librarians, the bans spread across a much higher percentage of districts than in states without such laws. In Texas, most bans came from just a few districts acting on their own.

The targets are consistent. Books about race, sexuality, and gender identity make up a disproportionate share of banned titles. PEN America calls this the “normalization of book banning”, a shift from controversy to routine.

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Religious instruction is entering public classrooms

Three states have moved to bring religious instruction or displays into public schools. Courts have pushed back, but the mandates keep coming.

Oklahoma

In June 2024, Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walton ordered all public schools to incorporate the Bible into classroom instruction. This was not framed as comparative religion or historical study. The directive required every teacher to keep physical copies of the Bible, the Constitution, and the Ten Commandments as “source material” in every classroom.

Schools across the state have responded unevenly. Some districts complied. Others ignored the order. Legal challenges are ongoing.

Louisiana

In 2024, Louisiana became the first state to require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom. A federal court blocked the law in June 2025, but the Fifth Circuit lifted the injunction in February 2026, allowing the law to take effect while the case continues. That ruling has encouraged other states to copy the approach.

Texas

Governor Abbott signed Senate Bill 10 into law in May 2025, requiring Ten Commandments displays in Texas public school classrooms despite the federal court ruling that struck down the identical Louisiana law.

Lawmakers in North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, and Tennessee have also introduced Ten Commandments bills in their 2025 sessions.

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DEI bans are reshaping what universities can teach

At least 18 states have passed laws restricting or banning diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at public universities, and the movement is expanding to K-12.

Texas SB 17

Texas Senate Bill 17, signed into law in 2023, prohibits public universities from:

• Establishing or maintaining a DEI office
• Hiring employees to perform DEI functions
• Requiring diversity statements in hiring
• Mandating DEI training for faculty or staff

Academic instruction, scholarly research, and student organizations are technically exempt. But the law’s author, Sen. Brandon Creighton, warned universities in March 2025 that they could lose millions in state funding if they were caught “renaming, relaunching or reauthorizing a DEI unit under the guise of a different name.”

The chilling effect has been real. UNT removed references to race and equity from course names. Faculty across the state report fear and self-censorship. Republican senators have threatened to withhold funding increases from universities they believe are not complying aggressively enough.

Expansion to K-12

In February 2025, the Texas Senate voted 20-11 along party lines to pass Senate Bill 12, extending the DEI ban to K-12 public schools. The bill would restrict how teachers discuss race, gender, and equity in the classroom.

Florida

Florida was the first state to ban DEI programs at public universities when Governor DeSantis signed SB 266 in May 2023. The law prohibits state funds from being used for DEI programs and restricts how race-related concepts can be taught.

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Teachers are leaving faster than they can be replaced

The teacher shortage did not start with these policies, but the policies are making it worse.

The NEA’s 2026 Rankings and Estimates report found that the average classroom teacher salary, adjusted for inflation, has decreased 4.6% since 2016-17. The teacher pay penalty (the gap between what teachers earn and what comparably educated workers earn elsewhere) has reached a record high.

The number of people entering teacher preparation programs is much lower than a decade ago. Retirements are not the main driver. Most teachers leaving the profession cite working conditions, not age. NEA research found that reducing attrition by half could virtually eliminate shortages.

Now add the policy environment:

• Book bans and curriculum restrictions put teachers at legal risk for doing their jobs
• DEI bans force faculty to self-censor or face professional consequences
• Voucher programs drain district budgets, leading to larger class sizes and program cuts
• Civil rights enforcement has collapsed at the federal level, removing protections teachers relied on
• The department that processes student loan forgiveness for public school teachers has been cut in half

When experienced teachers leave, districts fill positions with underprepared substitutes or leave them vacant. Rural districts, already struggling to recruit, are hit hardest by both voucher defunding and staffing shortages.

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Timeline: 2023-2026

Date	What happened
May 2023	Florida bans DEI at public universities (SB 266)
June 2023	Six states pass universal voucher programs in a single year
September 2023	Texas SB 17 (university DEI ban) takes effect
June 2024	Oklahoma superintendent mandates Bible instruction in all public schools
June 2024	Louisiana requires Ten Commandments in every classroom
2024-2025 school year	PEN America records 6,870 book ban instances across 23 states
March 2025	Trump signs executive order to dismantle Education Department
March 2025	DOGE terminates $900 million in education research contracts
March 2025	240+ OCR attorneys laid off; regional offices closed
April 2025	Texas passes voucher program ($1 billion initial cap)
May 2025	Texas SB 10 (Ten Commandments in classrooms) signed into law
June 2025	Federal court blocks Louisiana Ten Commandments law
Feb 2026	Fifth Circuit lifts injunction; Louisiana law takes effect
July 2025	Trump withholds $6.8 billion in education grants; 24 states sue
July 2025	One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed, including Educational Choice for Children Act
October 2025	Another 466 Education Department staff cut
December 2025	IRS launches federal voucher opt-in process for states
February 2026	Congress passes FY 2026 education budget maintaining level funding (217-214)
May 2026	$2 billion in education grants still withheld

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Protect yourself right now

1. Know what your state legislature is doing. Voucher programs, book bans, DEI restrictions, and religious mandates all start at the state level. Find your state legislature’s website and look up pending education bills. Show up to committee hearings or submit written testimony.

2. Support your local school board. Book ban decisions are often made at the district level. Attend school board meetings. Speak during public comment. Run for a seat if one is open. These elections have some of the lowest turnout in the country, which means a handful of organized voices have outsized power.

3. Talk to a teacher. Ask what they need. Ask what has changed. Ask what pressures they face that the public does not see. Teachers are the first to feel the impact of these policies, and their perspective is more reliable than any headline.

4. Follow the money. Ask where your state’s voucher dollars are going. Are they reaching low-income families, or subsidizing families already in private schools? ProPublica’s Arizona investigation is a blueprint for the questions every state should be asking.

5. Check your district’s banned book list. If your school district has removed books, find out which ones and why. PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans is searchable by state and district.