Since the Department of Education was formed by Congress in 1979, gutting it has been an enduring priority for the conservative movement. Ronald Reagan promised to shutter the year-old department when he became president in 1980, and Donald Trump, with a sweeping executive order signed on March 20, effectively achieved this when he dismantled its key functions. The move jeopardizes services for students across the United States, including administering federal funds for public schools, managing student loans, and overseeing how grants are managed by state governments.

Undoubtedly, marginalized student communities—such as low-income, disabled, and students of color—will be the most impacted by the downsizing of the DOE. What is less clear is the specific implications of the executive order, and how and when they will unfold. We’ve gathered four experts on public education in the United States to talk about how the dismantling of the Department of Education will hurt students immediately and in the years to come.

Jesse Hagopian is a writer, editor, activist, and educator based in Seattle, Washington. Jennifer Berkshire is a journalist who has written extensively about education; she also is the creator and cohost of the podcast “Have You Heard,” and works at the Boston College Prison Education Program and the Education Studies program at Yale. Eleni Schirmer is a writer, educator, and organizer whose work focuses on student debt and teacher unions. Paul Reville is the former secretary of education in Massachusetts, and a professor of practice of educational policy and administration at Harvard University.

Their responses have been edited for length and clarity.

In media coverage of the closing of the Department of Education, what’s been missing?

Jesse Hagopian: The ideological goal behind this move: to gut the system from the inside, abandon the most marginalized students, privatize education, and sell it off to the highest bidder. Without a federal Department of Education, Title IX, IDEA, civil rights oversight, and funding to high-poverty schools will all be at risk. This isn’t about “efficiency” or “local control.”

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Very few in the mainstream press have reported on the broader education strategy of the Trump regime—a strategy designed not just to weaken public education, but to eliminate it altogether and replace it with a patchwork of private voucher schools and deregulated charter chains. And too little is being said about how the Democratic Party has consistently ceded ground in this battle. Rather than mobilize to defend public schools, too many Democrats have opted for triangulation and compromise—buying into the language of “parental rights” or quietly defunding education through austerity budgets. In doing so, they’ve allowed the far right to dominate the narrative and pave the way for attacks that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. That silence and retreat is part of what got us here.

Eleni Schirmer: Closing the Department of Education is a major assault on the right to learn. As Project 2025 drafters put it, “if we want a great nation, we should be preparing women to become mothers—not college graduates.” The less people learn to think critically, the more racist, sexist and classist ideologies are enabled to fester.

Shutting down federal student aid—this nation’s dispiriting proxy policy for accessible higher ed—is central to this vision. Although liberalizing access to debt is hardly the desired policy, until we have a meaningful system of free college, access to federal loans is the way working class families can attend higher ed.

The administration wants to use student loans to give a leg-up to the investor class by privatizing the entire student loan portfolio. With more than $1.6 trillion in federal loans, the Department of Education effectively operates as one of the nation’s largest banks, but is staffed like a regional airport. A complex suite of private contractors and loan servicing companies conduct much of the day-to-day management of these loans with minimal regulation or quality control management. As a result, millions of student borrowers regularly face mismanaged payments, poor documentation, inaccurate claims, broken promises of relief and miserable customer service.

Further privatizing these accounts will only exacerbate these problems, while securing a major boon for investors. Mainstream media has generally failed to appreciate that the web of private interests already embedded in the web of student debt have contributed to the student loan system’s inefficiencies and mismanagement—at great cost to student debtors and taxpayers.

Jennifer Berkshire: There’s often a baffled ‘how can they be doing this?’ tone to journalists’ coverage of, say, the decision to take a hatchet to the research arm of the department. But viewed through the prism of the rising primacy of race science on the right, it makes much more sense. If you view inequality as not just natural but genetically determined, then what do you care about how different groups of students are faring on standardized tests?

Indeed, the whole project of public education, which is the institution we put so much of our faith in to take kids from vastly disparate backgrounds and deliver them to a roughly equal outcome, is suspect. When conservative activist Chris Rufo says that he’d like to see the percentage of kids who attend college drop by half, who is he talking about? I’d love to see journalists be more forceful in asking that question.

Paul Reville: The role of the Department of Education, since its inception, has been to look out for the most disadvantaged populations. For low-income students, for English language learners, for students with disabilities. And to ensure that people’s rights are guaranteed, and support research that helps educators figure out best practices.

Historically, the Republican Party has stood for local control and leaving decisions up to people at the grassroots level. But now, they’re reaching over and telling you what you can teach, how you can teach, what bathrooms you have in your college, who you can admit and can’t. It’s worrisome, and it seems to be designed in a way to ensure that there’s only one point of view as to what needs to be done in education. And if you don’t conform to that point of view, you’re going to have to pay a price.

What are some of the consequences that won’t immediately be seen?

JH: Some of the most damaging effects of abolishing the Department won’t be immediate—they’ll unfold over time, as students grow up in systems stripped of even the most minimal oversight, accountability, or protections.

Let’s be clear: the Department of Education has never been a consistent champion of equity or antiracism. From its role in advancing standardized testing regimes that label, shame, and punish the most vulnerable students, to its underenforcement of civil rights protections, its record is deeply compromised. But that doesn’t mean its destruction won’t have devastating consequences.

First, we’ll see the deepening of an already fractured educational landscape. Without any federal guardrails, inequality between districts—and between states—will explode. Wealthier, whiter communities will be able to buffer themselves with private funding, while poor, working-class, and communities of color will be left with underfunded, surveillance-heavy schools and scripted, test-driven instruction. The result will be a national system that codifies abandonment.

Second, we’ll see an acceleration of curricular erasure and the proliferation of what I call “truthcrime” laws—legislation and policies that ban honest education about race, gender, and sexuality. Without even the symbolic pressure of federal guidance, more states will adopt sanitized textbooks, ban critical histories, and punish teachers who foster independent thought. This is how historical memory is lost, and how injustice becomes normalized.

Third, the long-term effect on teacher recruitment and retention will be profound. If teachers are criminalized, censored, and left without support, fewer people will enter the profession—and even fewer will stay. This is especially true for educators of color, queer educators, and all those committed to truth-teaching.

And finally, we’re not talking about a dramatic escalation of miseducation—we’re talking about its consolidation as the official purpose of public schooling. Schools already condition students to accept inequality, to internalize blame, and to mistake indoctrination for learning. If young people are raised in systems that reward silence, obedience, and the repetition of approved narratives, the danger is not just that they’ll be misinformed—it’s that they’ll come to believe resistance is impossible. The most dangerous long-term consequence is not just the loss of education, but the loss of imagination, the loss of the belief that a different future is possible.

ES: As it is, Americans over aged sixty are the fastest growing demographic of student debtors. As options for relief get axed, this trend will only worsen. We will continue to see a generation of would-be retirees, struggling to make student loan payments. In the longer term, we are likely to see fewer people—especially people of color and people from working-class backgrounds—attending college. Without relief programs, more and more people will default on their loans, resulting in garnishment of wages, tax refunds, and even social security.

According to the Department of Education, only 38 percent of borrowers today are in active repayment. Nearly 25 percent of the 42 million student borrowers are in default, meaning they have not made a payment in a year’s time—a large percentage of borrowers in default haven’t made a payment in 7 years. The student loan portfolio, in other words, is unstable. Should the Department of Education decide to transfer this portfolio to private investors, there is good reason to believe that in the near future, the portfolio will crash and investors will demand a bailout, akin to the 2008 bailout of banks that collapsed from the weight of unstable mortgages 2008.

JB: When Trump says that the goal is to send education back to the states it’s really important to pay close attention to what’s happening in those states. Over the past few years virtually every red state has enacted a budget-busting private school voucher program at the same time that they’ve slashed taxes on corporations and their wealthiest residents. Even before the economy started to sputter, states were looking at choppy financial waters. These are states, by the way, that were already underfunding their public schools. Now they’re also picking up the tab for families, including the very wealthiest, who already sent their kids to private school.

I think it’s really likely that we start to see red states slash spending on public schools. And we’ve seen this move before. It means teacher layoffs, school closures, the loss of programs and ‘extras’ that keep kids in school. It means a less educated future, which seems to be the point here.

PR: The federal government has indicated they’re not going to disaggregate data any longer, so that we can view who’s actually succeeding and who isn’t succeeding, not only by individual status, but by group status, so we know which groups need more attention. We’ll be operating in the dark. And the idea that we’re in an education system that ought to meet children where they are and give them what they need will become much harder to operate. Because we won’t know where they are, because we aren’t keeping track.

What communities will be most affected by the executive order and why?

ES: Closing the Dept of Ed’s student loan portfolio program will affect every single family that aspires to attend college that doesn’t have tens—if not hundreds—of thousands of dollars up front. Women, Black and Hispanic families already suffer the largest costs of a debt-financed higher education system.

JB: The civil rights division of the Department of Education has basically announced that it will no longer be investigating complaints related to race, except for what they characterize as ‘reverse racism,’ or to special education, which make up the vast majority of complaints.

For parents of kids with special needs, this is a terrifying time because you really don’t know if you have any rights. The protections your kids have, their right to a ‘free and appropriate public education,’ are federal, and now you have an administration that is saying, well we’re just going to stop enforcing your rights.

PR: The most vulnerable.

There’s money going out through Title I to provide additional support to schools that educate low-income youngsters. Those schools need additional help, and the federal government provides it. Same with multilingual learners, same with special-needs learners. Those grants presumably could be administered by another administrative agency. So the battle here isn’t about preserving the department for the sake of the department, although there are reasons for doing that—symbolic reasons that we as a nation think that education is important enough that it deserves a place at the cabinet table. But if you give the states a full range of discretion on how to use these grants, the most vulnerable students are going to be hurt the most. Because that money is going to be repurposed and used in ways that don’t benefit the target population.

What avenues do we have for fighting back?

JH: This moment demands more than defense. It demands a bold vision for what public education can be—and the courage to fight for it. One avenue is educator resistance. Across the country, teachers are refusing to comply with truthcrime laws. They are teaching banned books, telling the truth about systemic racism, and standing with students targeted by censorship and repression. These acts of pedagogical defiance—sometimes quiet, sometimes public—are frontline struggles for intellectual and human freedom.

Educators also showed the power of social justice unionism—especially the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). In their groundbreaking 2025 contract, CTU secured major victories that demonstrate what’s possible when educators organize around a vision of justice. They won explicit protections for teachers’ right to teach the truth—including about race, gender, and sexuality—at a time when other districts are criminalizing that very act, along with investments in mental health care, housing support, sustainable staffing levels, immigrant protections, and critically, environmental justice.

We also fight through student and youth organizing. From walkouts for Palestine and climate justice to student-led curriculum campaigns, young people are leading the way. The job of adults in this moment is to follow their lead, amplify their voices, and defend their right to learn and protest.

But we need to do more than support scattered uprisings. We need to unite the many powerful student organizations across the country into a national formation—a force capable of confronting the many manifestations of rising fascism: illegal deportations, truthcrime laws, the defunding of public education, US complicity in genocide in Gaza, accelerating climate chaos, criminalization of protest, and more. Just as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee once gave voice to a generation of freedom fighters, we need a new generation of students to come together, define their demands, and organize on a national scale.

One powerful opportunity to join the movement is the Zinn Education Project’s 5th annual Teach Truth Day of Action on June 7. Across the country, educators, students, parents, and community members will gather at historic sites, libraries, and public schools to defend the right to teach and learn about US history—including the histories of Black, Indigenous, LGBTQ+, immigrant, and working-class communities. It’s not just a protest—it’s a declaration that we will not lie to children, no matter the law.

ES: It is not too soon to start demanding a bailout for working-class families—not for investors that want to make a buck from its privatization. As Trump dismantles existing relief programs, student debtors should feel more entitled to demand full cancellation, not small scale fixes. More than ever, this moment to start growing demands for free college for all who want to learn. As higher ed becomes an intensification arena for Trump’s broader agenda (deportations, repression tactics, punitive budget assaults), more than ever, the left needs to put forward a vision for free, democratic, reparative higher education, guided above all, by the right to learn. Now is the time to get busy building for College for All.

PR: You’re going to see a fair amount, in districts and colleges, of just persisting with the work that educators believe needs to be done to best serve students. Our mission in education, it’s to serve students. It’s to prepare them to become discerning citizens and leaders in our democracy, to be able to get a 21st century job, to support themselves, to be lifelong learners. People are going to put their heads down and get the work done one way or another.

JB: I think it’s really important not to lose sight of just how unpopular Trump’s education agenda is. That includes dismantling the Department of Education, which something like 61 percent of voters oppose. Or take immigration enforcement. Even as roughly half of voters approve of Trump’s immigration policies, that number collapses when it comes to letting ICE arrest undocumented students at school. Trump’s signature education issue, beyond dismantling the Department of Education, is school vouchers–a cause that his own voters oppose.

As we saw in November, when voters in Nebraska and Kentucky got to weigh in on the question of whether they wanted to see tax dollars go to fund private religious schools, even his strongest supporters said, “No, thanks.” And perhaps no issue unites people like their opposition to school funding cuts, something we’re about to see a whole lot of thanks both to the Trump economy and to the administration’s aggressive efforts to cut funds to school districts or even whole states with policies it objects to. As scary a time as this is for public education in this country, we’re also going to have a whole lot of organizing opportunities.