The president has said he wants to eliminate the Education Department while fighting ‘woke’ ideology in schools. A week-by-week look at what he’s done.
This story was originally published by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit news outlet focused on education.
Since taking office Jan. 20, President Donald Trump has unleashed a flurry of orders and actions designed to reshape the federal government’s role in education. He has called the Education Department a “con job” and said he wants to close it “immediately.” That would take an act of Congress; but in the meantime, the administration has taken steps to transform the agency, overseeing what it said were hundreds of millions in cuts to education research, teacher training programs and other projects. The agency has also begun laying off employees, including in its Office for Civil Rights.
At the same time, the Trump administration is attempting to redefine what the federal government considers discrimination in schools and on college campuses. In letters and orders, the administration has tried to eliminate policies it describes as “woke” and to punish academic institutions it says discriminate against white and Asian people and others by taking into account race in hiring, housing, admissions and other practices. The Department of Education under Trump has also issued orders to ban transgender athletes from sports competitions and root out practices inclusive of transgender students.
In addition, the administration directed Immigration and Customs Enforcement that schools and colleges are no longer off-limits for its agents and threatened to punish education institutions for requiring Covid vaccinations. Many of the Trump administration’s actions are being challenged in court, and their impact on the education system remains uncertain.
We’ve compiled these actions below and will update this list as Trump’s second term unfolds. Let us know how the effects of these executive actions are unfolding in communities, child care centers, schools and colleges. Email us: editor@hechingerreport.org. Learn how to reach us securely here.
Week Six (Feb. 24)
Peggy Carr, who led testing at the Department of Education, was put on leave, The Washington Post and other outlets reported. Carr had been appointed to a six-year term as commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the landmark test known as NAEP, in 2021.
The Department of Agriculture reinstated the 1890 National Scholars Program, a scholarship for rural students to attend historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, after outcry over its suspension the previous week.
The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has cut some $18 million in grants from the Department of Labor’s Office of Apprenticeships, reports The Job newsletter. The grants were to provide employers with technical assistance on apprenticeships, among other work. The Labor Department also terminated its Advisory Committee on Apprenticeships.
Week Five (Feb. 17)
The Education Department announced more than $600 million in cuts to teacher training programs it said were educating teachers in “divisive ideologies.”
The department also canceled 18 grants totaling $226 million to a network of regional and national centers that provides materials and support to states and education systems. It accused the centers of promoting “race-based discrimination and gender-identity ideology.”
The department eliminated a Biden-era rule requiring federal review of how states approve and monitor certain authorizers of charter schools. Under the old rule, South Carolina had faced the loss of federal money because of what the Education Department had said was inadequate oversight of charter schools.
Also canceled was a long-term trend assessment for 17-year-olds, part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the Nation’s Report Card, or NAEP. A department spokesperson told the 74, which first reported the news, that that portion of the test had not been conducted since 2012 and was therefore not a “very effective longitudinal study.”
The department’s Office for Civil Rights initiated an investigation into the Maine Department of Education, and Maine School Administrative District #51, over allegations of transgender athletes competing in sports that align with their gender identity.
Week Four (Feb. 10)
An Education Department “Dear Colleague” letter threatened to withhold federal funds from schools, colleges and other education institutions that take into account race in their programs, training, admissions and other practices. The letter, which cited the 2023 Supreme Court decision striking down affirmative action in college admissions, said academic institutions that consider race in their practices are engaging in discrimination.
Trump, in a briefing, said, “The Department of Education is a big con job,” and “I’d like it to be closed immediately.” In her confirmation hearing the next day, Linda McMahon, the nominee for education secretary, seemed to support Trump’s calls to dismantle the Education Department. But she said funding for most programs would remain intact.
The Education Department rescinded guidance from the Biden administration that name, image and likeness payments to college athletes had to comply with Title IX and be proportionate between men and women.
The department also sent letters to a collegiate and a high school athletic association urging them to strip awards it said had been “wrongfully credited” to transgender athletes. It further announced two investigations into other school athletic associations it said were in violation of Trump’s executive order banning transgender athletes from competition, and said it would investigate five Virginia school districts for permitting transgender students to use bathrooms and other facilities that align with their gender identity.
The Institute of Education Sciences, the Education Department’s research arm, saw major cuts, including the termination of 89 contracts it said totaled nearly $900 million. The actual total may be significantly smaller, as some of the grants, which included evaluations of how the government spends education funds and efforts to improve math and reading instruction, had already been paid out. Also canceled were census-like data collections that track student progress.
In addition, the Education Department canceled $350 million in contracts and grants for regional educational laboratories, which provide technical assistance to schools, and four equity assistance centers. The department said those grants and contracts supported “wasteful and ideologically driven spending.”
The Trump administration’s efforts to lay off probationary employees hit agencies including the Department of Education and the Bureau of Indian Education. Education Department staff who lost their jobs reportedly included those in the Office for Civil Rights, communications, financial aid and the legal department.
Schools and universities that require students to be vaccinated against Covid face the loss of federal funding, under a new executive order.
The Education Department reversed Biden-era reporting requirements under the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006 that it said were overly burdensome and subjected school districts to “bureaucratic red tape.”
The White House created the “Make America Healthy Again” commission, to be led by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and charged it with evaluating the “prevalence of and threat posed” to children by antidepressants, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants and weight-loss drugs.
Week Three (Feb. 3)
Trump signed an executive order barring trans girls and women from participating in women’s sports, and withholding federal funding from entities that refuse to comply.
The Education Department announced it would investigate San Jose State University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association for allowing trans athletes to participate on sports teams for women or girls.
The administration announced it would reduce to 15 percent the “indirect cost payments” that the National Institutes of Health includes in its research grants to universities, hospitals and research institutes. Those overhead costs help cover facilities and administrative expenses; some institutions said the cuts would cripple research.
The Education Department opened investigations into five universities where it said widespread anti-Semitic harassment had been reported: Columbia University; Northwestern University; Portland State University; The University of California, Berkeley; and the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
The Defense Department began restricting access to books and learning materials in the school system it oversees for the children of military families, citing the Trump administration’s crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, according to The Washington Post.
The Education Department updated the Free Application For Student Aid (FAFSA), which high school and college students use to apply for federal money to pay for college, to remove the ability to mark anything but male or female as a student’s gender. Students who have to make any correction to a form already submitted for the 2024-25 or 2025-26 academic year will have to also update this piece of the form, the Federal Student Aid office said.
Week Two (Jan. 27)
A far-reaching pause on the distribution of federal grants and loans across agencies, including the Education Department and Health and Human Services, which oversees Head Start, quickly led to confusion. Court orders have blocked the effort, and the White House said it had pulled back the memo, but some Head Start providers, among other entities, reported they still had limited or no access to federal funds weeks later.
The Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation into Denver Public Schools over a gender-inclusive bathroom. The school board voted in 2020 to require all district schools to have at least one all-gender bathroom.
Notices were sent to about 50 Education Department staffers that they had been put on leave. The employees were reportedly dismissed because of their connection, however limited, to DEI work.
Trump issued an executive order to eliminate what the White House called radical indoctrination in K-12 schools. The order said federal dollars would be stripped from schools where there is “illegal and discriminatory treatment and indoctrination, including based on gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology.”
In a collection of actions to tackle anti-Semitism, including cataloging complaints about the issue against K-12 schools and colleges and universities, the president said he “will quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses” and order the Department of Justice to “quell pro-Hamas vandalism and intimidation, and investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities.”
On school choice, an executive order directed the education secretary to issue guidance within 60 days about how states can use federal dollars to support K-12 educational choice initiatives. It also orders the heads of other agencies, including the Labor Department; Health and Human Services; the Department of Defense; and the Interior Department, which houses the Bureau of Indian Education, to review how grants and funding in their control can be used to send students to private or charter schools.
The Education Department withdrew Biden administration rules about applications for federal charter school grant programs that it said “included excessive regulatory burdens and promoted discriminatory practices.” The agency also said it would quickly make available $33 million in federal grants for charter management organizations that it said had been stalled by the Biden administration.
Race-conscious admissions policies at military academies, explicitly left intact by the Supreme Court affirmative action ruling, were banned by the Defense Department. The agency also said it would ban the use of its resources and its employees’ time to host celebrations or events related to cultural awareness months, such as Black History Month or National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and identity-based clubs.
Rules governing how cases of sexual assault and harassment are handled at K-12 schools and colleges will revert to a version created in the first Trump administration, the Education Department said. Unlike rules set by the Biden administration, the 2020 rules set by then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos did not extend Title IX protection to gender identity.
Data from across government websites was removed to comply with Trump’s executive order recognizing only two sexes, male and female. The Office of Personnel Management ordered agencies to remove websites and social media accounts that “inculcate or promote gender ideology.” Among the information removed was data from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The wide-ranging survey includes questions about youth sexual orientation and gender identity.
Week One (Jan. 20)
Trump issued a sweeping executive order banning DEI efforts in all federal agencies, covering personnel policies, federal contracting and grant-making processes, among other things. He also instructed federal institutions to investigate DEI “compliance” at colleges with endowments of more than $1 billion, giving them 120 days to complete their investigations.
He issued an executive order reversing Title IX protections for transgender people and declaring that the government recognizes only two sexes, male and female, assigned at birth.
The Office for Civil Rights declared an end to investigations of book bans, dismissing 11 complaints from schools alleging that removing “age-inappropriate, sexually explicit, or obscene materials from their school libraries created a hostile environment for students.”
Schools and colleges are no longer off-limits to ICE and other immigration enforcement agents, according to a directive from the Department of Homeland Security.
