Sydney Sims is the youth and education reporter for Capital B Atlanta. In this piece she considers the implications of Project 2025 for education in Georgia (and elsewhere).
Georgians with school-age children and who attended college with the help of federal student loans routinely interact with the U.S. Department of Education without realizing it. That’s because it’s among the many federal bureaucracies that, unless there’s a major hiccup, does most of its work in the background.
But if Republicans take control of Congress and the White House in November, the Department of Education could disappear under a proposal outlined in the conservative policy blueprint called Project 2025. Vanishing a federal agency would require a battle in Congress and perhaps even the courts. But if the plan succeeded, its impact on vulnerable students and families who rely on funding and civil rights protections from the agency would be stark and obvious.
“It’s just [about] the enforcement of laws, protecting students of color,” said Preston Green, a professor of law and educational leadership at the University of Connecticut and a national expert in school vouchers and school desegregation. “For instance, if there is this sort of disparate impact on students of color, the federal government could become involved. Without that department, you would be removing that level of oversight and protection.”
Capital B Atlanta is analyzing parts of Project 2025, a 900-page document compiled by conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, to assess its potential impact on the lives of Black Atlantans. Former president Donald Trump has disavowed any connection to the plan, even though much of it was written by former officials of his administration. It contains calls for major policy revisions that would allow Trump, if re-elected, the ability to remake every part of the federal government.
That includes eliminating the Department of Education altogether. The Department of Education oversees federal education policies, programs, and funding from K-12 to postsecondary institutions, administers federal financial aid programs, collects data, and ensures compliance with federal laws regarding civil rights and equal access to education.
For parents, students, school administrators, and student loan borrowers, that would mean a cascade of potential consequences, from slashing critical dollars for under-resourced schools to jeopardizing critical financing options for higher education and disappearing standards for curricula and educational quality. Policy experts say that state and local school departments would lose vital federal oversight, creating a void where the governing body once enforced and created laws that promoted the protection of student rights, administered federal funding for college, and streamlined educational practices.
