President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to abolish the Department of Education.

On the campaign trail, he repeatedly highlighted the agency as a symbol of excessive federal intervention in the daily lives of American families.

“I say it all the time, I’m dying to do this again. We will eventually eliminate the federal Department of Education,” he said in September at a rally in Wisconsin.

“We will drain the swamp of government education and end the abuse of your taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate America’s youth with all kinds of things you don’t want our young people to hear,” Trump said .

In 1979, President Jimmy Carter, a Georgia Democrat, signed legislation making the Department of Education a Cabinet-level agency. fulfill a campaign promise he joined one of the nation’s largest teachers unions, the National Education Association.

Previously, federal education programs were housed in other agencies. Trump has not said exactly how he would like to close the department — which would require an act of Congress — or what would happen to federally funded education programs if he did so.

Here’s what the Department of Education is doing and how its elimination could play out:

Directing money to states and schools

Some of the Department of Education’s most important tasks are administering federal funding appropriated by Congress for elementary and secondary schools and managing federal student loan and financial aid programs.

Two of the largest funding programs for K-12 schools are the Title I Programwhich aims to contribute to the education of children from low-income families, and the IDEA Programwhich provides money to schools to help them meet the needs of children with disabilities.

These programs help achieve the Department’s congressionally declared goal: “to ensure access to equal educational opportunity for every individual.”

Together, these programs provide elementary and secondary schools with approximately $28 billion annually. But federal funding typically makes up only about 10 percent of all school funding, with the rest coming from state and local taxes. That said, schools received additional federal funding over the past four years to help them recover from the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Department of Education also distributes about $30 billion annually to low-income students through the Pell Grant program and manages a $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio.

Provide oversight and develop regulations

The Department of Education also plays an oversight role and participates in federal rulemaking.

Its Office for Civil Rights, for example, is responsible for investigating alleged complaints of discrimination in colleges and elementary and secondary schools, which increased significantly after the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel last October.

The department can also create federal regulations. Some of the agency’s rules have recently addressed issues at stake in the culture wars that have seeped into local politics during the Covid-19 pandemic.

President Joe Biden’s Education Department strengthened protections for transgender studentsand the agency is also involved in developing the administration’s student loan forgiveness regulations. But these two rules are currently blocked in court.

Separately, the first Trump administration reversed Obama-era guidelines this was intended to ensure that minority students were not unfairly disciplined in schools.

But states and local school boards still hold power that cannot be replaced by the department. During the pandemic, for example, the Department of Education could not require schools to close or remain open for in-person learning. In fact, despite a threat from then-President Trumpthe executive branch could not unilaterally cut federal funding for schools that had not reopened in fall 2020.

Federal money comes with strings attached

The federal money that schools receive through programs like Title I and IDEA comes with strings attached. Schools receive this money subject to meeting certain conditions and reporting requirements.

“For those of us who are concerned about the red tape created by the Department of Education, the most important question is how to approach these rules and conditions,” said Frederick Hess, principal investigator and chief academic officer. on education policy at the American Enterprise Institute.

“Abolishing the ministry is little more than a shortcut,” he said.

One way to cut red tape is to provide federal funds through what’s called a “block grant,” which has fewer requirements.

Abolishing department may not eliminate federal education funding

Federal funding programs for K-12 schools that help support the education of students from low-income families and children with disabilities predate the creation of the Department of Education.

It is possible that some of these funding programs would be transferred to other federal agencies if the Department of Education were abolished.

“I don’t think schools would suddenly lose money,” said Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab, a research center focused on education finance policy at Georgetown University.

The Title I program, for example, “has proven relatively popular on both sides of the aisle,” Roza said.

When presidents have proposed cuts to the Department of Education’s budget in the past, Congress has resisted and allocated more funding than the president requested about 71% of the time, according to an analysis by the Brookings Institution.

Even when the first Trump administration proposed cutting the department’s budget, the Republican-controlled Congress ultimately increased funding.

Congress unlikely to approve full agency shutdown

It should be noted that closing a federal agency would require an act of Congress.

Calls to abolish the Department of Education or merge it with another federal agency are not new. SO-President Ronald Reagana Republican, called for abolishing the agency just a year after it began operating in 1980 — but backed off when it appeared there were problems. little support in Congress.

During Trump’s first term as president, his administration proposed merger of the Departments of Education and Labor into a single federal agency. Even though Republicans controlled the Senate and House of Representatives at the time, the proposal went nowhere.

Next January, Republicans hope to take unified control of Washington; they will have the majority in the Senate but the balance of power in the House of Representatives is still undecided. Two new Republican members of the Senate – Bernie Morenowho beat Sherrod Brown in Ohio, and Tim Sheehywho beat Jon Tester in Montana – embraced the idea.

But even if the Republican Party wins the House, it remains unclear whether there will be enough support to abolish the department in Congress this time.