What Trump's second term could mean for education in Washington state

President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House has raised a lot of questions about how policies he’s pushed could affect public education.

Will already financially strapped public school districts face federal funding cuts, as Trump threatened on the campaign trail? How will his proposed mass deportations affect schools? Will he seek to overturn President Joe Biden’s recent additions to Title IX protections for LGBTQ+ students?

And perhaps chief among all the questions in recent weeks: Will Trump fulfill his campaign promise to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education? Although the move is unlikely, what would it mean for local schools, students, and families?

Education officials and policy experts in Washington state weighed in on this issue and others they’ll have their eyes on heading into Trump’s second term.

What’s the Department of Education’s role in local schools?

The education department has a broad range of responsibilities — but not a lot of control over schools. That’s largely by design.

President Jimmy Carter spearheaded the effort to create the department while campaigning in 1976, with the idea for it to serve in an advisory capacity to schools, and more efficiently and effectively operate national education programs.

Republicans — and some Democrats — opposed the idea from the beginning, over fears the federal government would meddle too much in local education issues and inflate an already ballooning bureaucracy. It took several years to come to fruition, with Congress establishing the U.S. Department of Education as a cabinet-level agency in 1979.

Today, the department’s overarching goal is to “promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access,” according to its website.

It operates the standardized test known as the “nation’s report card,” and collects data on things like enrollment, where schools spend money, teacher salary and attrition, and crime in schools.

The department also enforces civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, sex, disability, and other factors in schools that receive federal funding.

Beyond that enforcement, the department does not set curriculum or policies at individual schools or districts.

“It’s not like the Department of Defense — the federal government does not run public education in our country,” said Marguerite Roza, the Seattle-based director of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab. “K-12 education is essentially run at the state and local level.”

“If it doesn’t go well, you blame your governor or your state superintendent or your local school board,” she added. “It's not really the Department of Ed running it.”

In addition, the agency is in charge of the $1.6 trillion federal student loan program, and other grant programs for K-12 schools. The two largest ones are Title I, which provides supplemental funding to schools serving a high proportion of low-income students, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which helps schools cover the costs of educating students who receive special education services.

The department’s 2024 budget included $20.5 billion for Title I schools and $16.8 billion for special education.

That may sound like a lot of money, but it’s a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of things. The federal government provides less than 10% of funding for public schools. The rest comes from state and local governments.

Take Seattle Public Schools, Washington's largest public school system, as an example. In the 2024-25 fiscal year, the district said it got less than 7% of its revenue from the feds. The state, on the other hand, kicked in about 63%.

“Federal funds are a small slice of the overall pie,” Roza said.

Funding cuts, Title IX protections, school choice: What changes could come from Trump 2.0?

Still, that chunk of funding from the feds is critical for schools, said David Knight, a professor of education finance and policy at the University of Washington. And Trump’s pledges to slash school funding are “certainly cause for concern.”

But, Knight said, history suggests those proposals won’t get traction.

In 2017, when Trump last attempted to slash funding for the Department of Education by over 10%, he was unsuccessful — even with a Republican Congress.

“People want well-funded, well-resourced schools, both for their communities and for their children,” Knight said. “It’s an important institution for this country, so despite his campaign rhetoric, I would be surprised if the administration moves to cut federal education funding.”

Roza agrees. She’s heard a lot of concerns from school officials across Washington state and the country, as many of them grapple with financial challenges fueled by declining enrollment and the expiration of federal Covid relief funding.

A more realistic concern, Roza said, is the impact of a possible federal school choice initiative — another centerpiece of Trump’s campaign and motivator behind his nomination of Linda McMahon to lead the Department of Education. That could also draw students and funding out of public schools.

State Superintendent Chris Reykdal also doesn’t believe drastic cuts to federal education funding will happen.

If it does, Reykdal is confident Washington could handle it — but he worries about other states.

Only a third of the money Title I schools get in Washington actually comes from the feds. The rest comes from the Legislature. Plus, Reykdal has already asked state lawmakers for more funding in his budget proposal — just in case.

“In a state like ours, we’re as insulated as anybody could be,” he said. “I feel terrible for very conservative, rural, remote states who don’t have those state programs.”

RELATED: WA's top education official requests additional $3 billion for public schools

Reykdal is more concerned about whether Trump will dismantle civil rights protections, including Title IX.

During his administration, President Joe Biden revised Title IX regulations so that they include protections for LGBTQ+ students. The original 1972 sex discrimination law only protected women’s rights.

Biden also dismantled rules created by Trump’s former education secretary, Betsy DeVos, that gave students accused of sexual misconduct extra protections.

Trump has vowed to reinstate those protections during his campaign, and has also pledged to ask Congress to pass a bill “establishing that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female, and they are assigned at birth.” That bill would also, Trump said, “make clear that Title IX prohibits men from participating in women’s sports.”

In this case, Reykdal believes Washington is, once again, in a good defensive position. The state currently has civil rights and gender protections that exceed current federal rules, and he said the challenge would only come if the federal government tried to supersede those state laws.

If that happens, Reykdal said he and other state officials — including Governor-elect Bob Ferguson, who sued Trump as state attorney general nearly 100 times during his first term, and has already vowed to push back again — won’t be afraid to act.

“We’ll partner with the attorney general’s office and bring litigation if any of this looks like it’s trying to step on our state rights,” Reykdal said.

End of U.S. Department of Education is not likely

So, can Trump actually nix the Department of Education? Not alone — it would take an act of Congress, just as it did to create the department.

And, experts say, that’s highly improbable.

Although axing the Department of Education has been a popular idea among Republicans since President Ronald Reagan was in the White House — and the party won control of the Senate with a 53-47 majority last month — there likely wouldn’t be enough support for the idea.

“In the end, it would take 60 votes in the Senate,” Roza said. “I don’t think we have 60 votes.”

Knight agrees. Many of the department’s programs and funding streams are quite popular among both Democrats and Republicans, he said.

And even if some Democrats joined Trump’s party to abolish the department, Knight suspects there would be blowback.

“School district superintendents hold a fair amount of political sway with both state and federal legislators,” he said. “I would surmise that Republican members of Congress are going to hear opposition from superintendents and other members of their constituency.”

RELATED: A look at the potential impact of shutting down the Department of Education

What would change if the department went away? Not a ton — at least not that students, families, and individual schools would likely notice.

Revenue streams for Title I schools and special education wouldn’t just disappear. Not only are these funding programs extremely popular on both sides of the aisle, but they were both created by federal laws that predate the Department of Education.

If the department were gutted, those funding streams would likely be allocated by another federal agency, Knight said. And the same would be true for the department’s Office for Civil Rights, and the Institute of Education Sciences, which conducts research and compiles statistics.

“If those responsibilities get moved to a different agency or a different part of the government, that’s going to change how those regulations are implemented,” Knight said, “but it won’t make them go away.”

Plus, if Trump makes good on his campaign promises to both axe the Department of Education and withhold funding from, as he put it during the campaign, “any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children,” Knight isn’t sure who would enforce it.

“It’s a little bit ironic that Trump actually needs a Department of Education to accomplish some of his policy goals,” Knight said. “These are the sorts of rallying calls that shift the conversation away from the stuff that we really should be talking about.”

In Washington state, Reykdal said he’s prepared for any of those changes, no matter how unlikely.

“It might be that, in my office, we’re dealing with more federal agencies,” he said. “But the goal would be to keep as absolutely minimal disruption as possible to school districts.”