Trump’s Project 2025 Dismantles Public Education and Undermines Democracy

By Joe Holomuzki

Public education is a fundamental pillar of our democracy. Education reduces crime, improves public health, strengthens gender equality, and produces citizens who are more informed, able to think critically and generate ideas, and are therefore more employable.

Both Project 2025 and Trump’s 2024 Republican Platform share a vision that would reshape the American education system from pre-school through college. One that would harm students and schools nationwide and would end public education as we know it.

Project 2025 Abolishes Department of Education

Perhaps the most important takeaway from the 44-page education chapter of Project 2025 is the goal to abolish the U.S. Department of Education. Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed at rallies that he would disband it and “move everything back to the states where it belongs.”

The Department of Education is the only federal agency mandated to ensure equal opportunity and accountability in education and to fund states and school districts. Shutting down this Department ends federal education funding and any civil rights protections, promotes public school closures, and allows for the diversion of public money to private and charter school voucher programs.

Most public schools receive the majority of their funding from local and state governments, but the federal contribution (~8─14%) still translates to billions of dollars annually. States and school districts that receive a higher share of those dollars would feel a disproportionate hit, particularly affecting programs earmarked for special needs and disadvantaged students and aid for college students (e.g., Pell Grants).

Other Project 2025 recommendations that will drastically overhaul federal education policy include:

• Discontinuing the Title I program that provides federal funding to schools serving low-income children
• Eliminating the Head Start program for young children in poverty
• Rescinding federal civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ students
• Undercutting federal capacity to enforce civil rights law
• Reducing federal funding for students with disabilities and removing guardrails designed to ensure these children are adequately served by schools
• Promoting universal private school choice
• Privatizing the federal student loan portfolio

These policy proposals are hugely consequential.

Transfer Title I to Department of Health and Abolish 180,000 Positions

If dismantled, the Department’s Title I program, which helps fund schools with low-income families, would be transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)  would be dismantled. This program provides supplemental federal funding to states to ensure that all children, regardless of their income status, receive a fair, equitable, and high-quality education.

Project 2025 aims to move the funding into a block grant, giving states more flexibility on how to spend this ‘no strings attached money’ on “any lawful education purpose under state law”. It also recommends redirecting taxpayer dollars to fund private and religious schools.

Ending Title I funding would also mean removing funding to hire and retain well-prepared teachers. The Center for American Progress estimates that ending Title I would abolish 180,000 teacher positions and greatly exacerbate a nationwide teacher shortage. During the 2023-24 school year, every state in the country reported a teacher shortage with worst case scenarios in high-poverty schools where poor working conditions and unmanageable workloads are the norm.

Divest Disabilities Education

Project 2025 recommends divestments in the Department’s Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, moving the special education money that now goes to schools into HHS-run block grants for states to distribute to parents.

Abolishing the Department of Education and its programs would take an act of Congress, but Project 2025 plans involve skeletonizing the Department so that all that is left is a hollow shell that can only gather statistics to disseminate.

Eliminate Head Start

Project 2025 also proposes to eliminate Head Start, a program that funds early childhood education for low-income families in both urban and rural areas. The Center for American Progress says eliminating Head Start would reduce access to and increase costs for childcare, hurting national economic stability.

Project 2025 Reflects a White Christian Nationalist Education Agenda

In addition, Project 2025 calls for: rolling back Title IX, which prohibits discrimination based on sex; blocking student debt cancellation programs; shifting the handling of student loans to private lenders which would quadruple monthly payments; censoring anti-racist curricula that teach tolerance in schools; ending programs related to diversity of LGBTQ+ youth; eliminating school nutrition programs, particularly for children experiencing food insecurity during the summer when they lack access to school meals; and increasing privatization of education. Together, these policies reflect a white Christian Nationalist education agenda.

Trump & Project 2025 Take Education System Backward and Undermine Democracy

Our public education system is not without flaws. However, Trump and Project 2025 would spell an end to everything our country has sought to do with public education. It spells an end to hard-fought policies on racial justice and human rights. It establishes religion at the core of our education system and undermines democracy. We won’t go back. Vote for Kamala Harris for President.