Education Department cuts threaten to deepen local schools' woes
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The Trump administration wants to empower local schools by dismantling the U.S. Department of Education. The catch: Local school districts nationwide already are struggling with teacher shortages, falling test scores and rising turnover in leadership.
Why it matters: Those measures of instability — along with ongoing debates over what should be taught, and how — are just a few of the problems local systems are facing as the White House signals that less help could be coming.
- It's unclear precisely how the Education Department's demise will affect federal funding to local school systems.
- The department is the primary source of federal money to local schools, but not the only one. Federal funds now make up an average of about 14% of a public school system's budget, with more typically going to lower-income areas.
The big picture: The Trump administration's push against federal mandates in education is based partly on the notion that local school officials best know how to shape their schools.
- At the same time, the administration is threatening to withhold federal funding from districts that don't follow President Trump's demand that they end diversity policies and restrict the teaching of subjects such as racism in America. (That demand is now the focus of a court battle.)
- Many education advocates fear public schools' problems are likely to get worse as the Department of Education fades away — especially if resources decline.
Zoom in: School districts' instability has been most apparent in the constant turnover among systems' leaders. Superintendents' firings and resignations have soared across the country, preventing many school systems from adopting long-term, effective plans, advocates say.
- States with high percentages of students in poverty and lagging student achievement often have some of the highest superintendent turnover rates, according to national data collected by Superintendent Lab reviewed by Axios.
- Alaska, Mississippi, Louisiana and West Virginia saw more than 60% of K-12 public school districts experience at least one superintendent transition from 2019 to 2024.
- New Mexico — which ranks at or near the bottom nationally on almost every measurement for public schools — had at least one new superintendent in 57% of its districts during that five-year period.
What they're saying: Rachel S. White, founder of Superintendent Lab and an education professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told Axios that most of that turnover occurs in urban areas with large percentages of students of color.
- "This whole idea of abolishing the U.S. Department of Ed, or at least greatly reducing its capacity to do the work, potentially can make the role of the superintendent even more important than it already is," White said.
- A Department of Education spokesperson did not respond to Axios for comment.
Conservative-leaning groups have applauded Trump's move to close the department and give local governments more control.
- "Returning decision-making authority and funding to the states can foster innovation, accountability and better educational outcomes," Virginia Board of Education President Grace Creasey said in a statement. "This is about putting parents and state and local leaders back in charge of education."
State of play: The country's K-12 student population is more diverse than it's ever been, but economic factors have led school enrollments to be increasingly segregated by race, fostering disparities in resources.
- Many school boards are locked in heated cultural fights over issues such as library books, teachers' pay, trans athletes and teaching about enslavement — issues that can crowd out debates on strategies to raise test scores and graduation rates.
Zoom out: U.S. students had record-low reading comprehension scores last year in a learning loss trend exacerbated by the pandemic, a national education report released in January found.
- In 2024, the percentage of eighth graders with reading comprehension scores below the "basic" metric was the largest in the assessment's history.
The bottom line: The Trump administration's move to give local entities more control doesn't address long-standing education issues.
- "Are these kids coming out to be productive citizens? Are they strong, moral people who can read and write and do math?" Tim DeRoche, founder of the nonpartisan education watchdog Available to All, told Axios.
- You kind of lose sight of that in the power, politics and the economics of the whole game."
