phbet Trump Wants to Shut Down the Department of Education? Is That Possible?

On the campaign trail, Donald J. Trump has depicted the nation’s public schools as purveyors of an extreme ideology on gender and race. One of his proposed remedies is to revive a Reagan-era call to shut down the federal Department of Education, founded in 1979.

“We will move everything back to the states, where it belongs” he said in one speech. “They can individualize education and do it with the love for their children.”

On the Democratic side, vows to resist that effort have become a frequent applause-line in speeches.

“We are not going to let him eliminate the Department of Education that funds our public schools,” Vice President Kamala Harris said at the Democratic National Convention.

Lost in the back and forth over this relatively small federal agency is any discussion of what the department — affectionately known in Washington policy circles as “Ed” — actually does, and what the practical impact would be of shuttering it (if that is even possible).

How much power does it have?

Perhaps paradoxically, even as Mr. Trump has vowed to close Ed, he has implied that he would use the agency’s investigatory powers to peer into local school practices around gender and race.

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