Josephine Lee at the Texas Observer sat down with Texas native and education policy expert Diane Ravich to discuss what could be coming next. It’s a wide ranging and important interview.
While people may know about Trump and Project 2025’s plans to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, they might not know what the agency does and how its elimination could impact their schools and their children. Can you explain?
His plan is actually Project 2025 and during the election, he pretended he never heard of it, didn’t know who was behind it, and now its key figures have been hired for his new administration. So clearly Project 2025 reflects what he wants to do. What you have to understand about the department is that it’s not a department that tells people what to teach. They’re actually forbidden by law to do anything about curriculum. But what they do is they hand over money. And the law that was passed under [President] Lyndon B. Johnson, called the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the purpose of that law was to have equitable funding, because the schools, particularly in the South but in other areas as well, were so underfunded; they had so many impoverished kids. The purpose was to make sure that wealthy states were helping to raise up underfunded states. It has not eliminated the inequities, but it was a step in that direction.
There are two big programs that the Department of Education administers. Title I of the ESEA sends money to schools that have large numbers of very poor kids. The Department of Education is one of the smallest departments in the federal government, but [its] biggest flow of money is Title I. The other big one is IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), which is for handicapped kids or kids with disabilities. The money for kids with disabilities is supposed to go to kids with disabilities wherever they are.
So [funding for] those two programs and almost everything else, under Project 2025, would be sent to the states and turned into what the Republicans call block grants. A block grant means it’s no longer categorical. The state gets this tranche of money, and they [decide.] So the money for kids with disabilities might be diverted to some other purpose. The money for kids in poverty might be diverted for some other purpose. And the language of Project 2025 says that, in time, the money would be cut off.
