Abolishing the Department of Education is the ultimate goal of a policy blueprint for the next conservative presidential administration laid out by a coalition of organizations led by the Heritage Foundation.
The foundation, along with dozens of other prominent conservative organizations such as the Conservative Partnership Institute, Alliance Defending Freedom, Freedomworks, Hillsdale College, the Independent Women’s Forum, and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, have teamed up to create a presidential transition endeavor dubbed Project 2025.
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The project, along with finding qualified individuals to staff the executive branch, has created a policy manual dubbed the “Mandate for Leadership” for the next conservative president to use as a blueprint for its policy agenda.
The more than 900-page manual includes detailed policy objectives for each executive branch agency, in addition to legislative goals.
In the policy section on the Department of Education, the project outlines an ultimate goal of eliminating the department by rolling most of its functions into existing agencies. Several 2024 Republican presidential candidates have endorsed the idea of eliminating the department, including former President Donald Trump, the far and away favorite to win the Republican nomination.
Other candidates, such as Vivek Ramaswamy and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), have repeatedly brought up the need to rein in the federal bureaucracy, including at the Department of Education. Both candidates have singled out the department as one they would like to eliminate, with Ramaswamy outlining a plan for doing so on his website.
“Many people over the years have suggested that the department should be eliminated, long term, but I think this is one of the first thorough roadmaps for how we could actually accomplish that,” Lindsey Burke, the director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy, told the Washington Examiner in an interview.
Among the proposed ideas include moving several programs for K-12 education to the Department of Health and Human Services, transferring civil rights enforcement to the Department of Justice, and the collection of education statistics to the Department of Commerce.
While eliminating the Department of Education requires an act of Congress, the Mandate for Leadership also calls for actions a future president could undertake solely by controlling the executive branch.
“There are executive branch actions that need to be considered on Day One, and a lot of this is clawing back the regulatory overreach that we’ve seen the Biden administration engage in,” Burke said, specifically mentioning the administration’s proposed Title IX regulations and the changes to the Income Driven Repayment student loan program.
The proposed Title IX regulations, which are likely to be finalized later this year, redefine the prohibition on discrimination on the basis of sex to include gender identity and sexual orientation. The administration also modified the rules for the Income Driven Repayment program, which allows student loan borrowers to make loan payments based on their discretionary income.
Burke also said that she would like to see the department proactively enforce the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard that prohibited the consideration of an applicant’s race in college admissions decisions.
“The next administration needs to make sure that schools are actually abiding by Students for Fair Admissions and not trying to do anything that would wiggle around what the law now says,” Burke said, adding that civil rights investigations could be conducted if there is reason to believe that a university is still considering race in its admissions.
But ultimately, the Mandate for Leadership’s goal, Burke said, is to restore state and local control of education so that bureaucratic red tape from Washington, D.C., does not interfere with local decision-making.
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“This is ultimately for the good of American education and families,” Burke said. “And if we want to see improved outcomes and improve local control and improve family control, that requires winding down Washington’s intervention.”
The Washington Examiner reached out to the Department of Education to comment on the growing calls for its elimination.
