LANSING — Michigan schools are still awaiting more details on the status of the Department of Education, which President Trump has attempted to dismantle in recent weeks.
The agency was already the smallest among the president’s cabinet, and Trump’s orders will likely reduce that workforce even further.
The Department was created in 1979 by then-President Jimmy Carter and Congress.
“In the decades since then, we’ve seen nothing but continued bloat, continued strings attached,” said Beth DeShone, executive director of the Great Lakes Education Project.
Opponents of the Department say it has not accomplished its goal of increasing student achievement and has more often served as a middleman for distributing funds.
The Department is not directly involved with educating students and does not set curriculum. Those responsibilities fall on state and local entities.
”This is an attempt to make sure that state Departments of Education are empowered with decision-making for the students in their state,” DeShone said.
The Department of Education makes up close to 15% of public K-12 education funding, according to the Education Data Initiative. Michigan gets more than $400 million a year for special education support.
“We have more than 200,000 students across our state who rely on those resources to fulfill their full potential, to get the individualized attention that these students require to succeed,” said Thomas Morgan, communications consultant for the Michigan Education Association.
The Department has said it will continue to distribute those funds, but some worry reductions in the workforce could make that more difficult.
“Those dollars have been appropriated by Congress — those dollars need to continue to flow,” said Peter Spadafore, Executive Director of the Michigan Alliance for Student Opportunity. “How will that happen? As the Department of Education — the scope of that Department — shrinks over time, those resources and those functions still need to be performed.”
The Department also allocates close to half a billion dollars a year for low-income students.
“The Department of Education helps to level the playing field for our most vulnerable kids, kids with special needs and kids living in lower-income areas, and it helps them have a chance at achieving the American dream,” Morgan said.
Opponents of the agency argue that those funds will still be distributed, but with more flexibility for their use.
“Any education laws that exist at the federal level are still intact, and the funding is still intact,” DeShone said. “What this is attempting to do is just sort of remove an extra bureaucratic layer and get that, get all of that decision making happening more locally to the teachers and students.”
If President Trump wants to get rid of the agency, he will need an act of Congress — but he’s made it clear he will attempt to shrink the department as much as possible.