Trump wants to end U.S. Department of Education. How would Fort Worth schools be affected?
Amid reports that White House officials are preparing an executive order to close the U.S. Department of Education, school officials in Fort Worth are working to figure out how such a move would affect students here.
President Donald Trump can’t unilaterally dismantle the department through executive order. But the Wall Street Journal reported this week that White House officials are considering an order that would direct the education officials to end any programs that aren’t enshrined in law, and call on Congress to eliminate the department outright.
Texas schools receive millions of dollars in funding from the department every year, including money intended to support low-income students and students with disabilities. Much of that funding is distributed through programs that are required by law, so any executive order Trump signed wouldn’t mean districts would see that revenue cut off immediately.
But education advocates say the most vulnerable students could be harmed the most if the department is dismantled.
FWISD receives millions in federal funding
Fort Worth ISD received $61.9 million in federal funding for the current school year, according to the budget the district’s board adopted last June. That represents about 6% of the district’s overall budget. Part of that total was the $13.3 million the district received in Title I funding to support economically disadvantaged students, according to district budget records.
In a statement, Fort Worth ISD officials said it’s unclear how schools in the district would be affected if the department were shuttered.
“At this time, any potential impact is unknown as this issue is still evolving,” officials said. “Our focus will continue to be on educating all students and ensuring a safe and welcoming environment for students, staff, and the community.”
Congress established the U.S. Department of Education in 1979 with the passage of the Department of Education Organization Act. Because the department was created through an act of Congress, it can only be dismantled through another act of Congress.
Most decisions that directly affect the kind of instruction students get in classrooms, like setting curricula and academic standards, happen at the state and district level. But the federal Education Department performs a number of major functions. It handles more than a trillion dollars in federal student loan debt, collects and reports data on student achievement and enforces federal laws guaranteeing equal access to education, including those dealing with special education and Title IX rules preventing discrimination against women and girls.
The department also distributes money to school districts through the federal Title I program, which gives supplemental funding to schools with large numbers of students from low-income families. Like the department itself, the Title I program was created by an act of Congress, meaning it can’t be eliminated by executive order. That’s also true of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which provides federal funding to support special education programs.
The department also investigates civil rights complaints, including one the department’s Office of Civil Rights opened in 2023 following an incident in which a Fort Worth ISD teacher allowed a student to use a racial slur repeatedly during a class presentation. That investigation is still ongoing, according to the department’s website.
Department elimination proposal dates back decades
Eliminating the department has been a goal of Republican leaders for decades. In 1982, just three years after the department was created, President Ronald Reagan pledged in his first State of the Union address to eliminate it, along with the U.S. Department of Energy. More recently, in a 2023 Republican presidential debate, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy all pledged to shutter the department. Trump, who didn’t participate in the 2023 debate, proposed merging the department with the Department of Labor during his first term, but that proposal went nowhere.
More recently, Trump has floated the idea of shifting some of the department’s functions to other departments or delegating them to the states. Project 2025, the political handbook published last year by the conservative policy group Heritage Foundation, called for ending Title I and converting other federal education funding into block grants made to states.
The problem with that idea is that state departments of education don’t have the capacity to take on the U.S. Department of Education’s responsibilities, said Eric Duncan, director of P-12 policy for the national advocacy group EdTrust.
If federal education funding that currently goes to school districts were instead to be given to states in the form of block grants, it would leave state education departments with the task of parceling it out and making sure every district got what it needed, Duncan said. Most states don’t have the administrative capacity to handle that work on top of the work those departments are already doing, he said.
If that were to happen, the students who would suffer most would be the ones whose access to education hasn’t always been guaranteed, Duncan said — students of color, students with disabilities and students who are learning English, in particular. Many small districts would also lose out, he said, because the revenue they bring in from state and local sources often doesn’t cover the cost of running a school district, so they have to rely on federal money to fill in the gaps.
If the department were to be eliminated, it wouldn’t necessarily mean that students of color and students with disabilities would have no civil rights protections, Duncan said. School districts would still be obligated to follow the same laws they’re required to follow now.
But federal enforcement is an important recourse for families of those students to fall back on when schools break those rules, he said. If the department enforcing those rules were to close, those families would lose one of their most important tools for advocating for their children, he said.
This story was originally published February 7, 2025 at 5:30 AM.
