In the past several weeks, the Trump Administration has taken reckless steps toward its goal of dismantling the Department of Education. The administration’s brazen disregard for the millions impacted by its policies is nothing new, but in this case, they know exactly what the consequences will be: exacerbated inequities in public schools mainly impacting low-income and Black and brown students, and those in need of additional support.
The possibility of dismantling the Department of Education has, in fact, been in play for conservatives since 1954, when the Supreme Court ruled that segregation in schools was illegal in Brown v. Board of Education. They played the long game to get here—a long shame.
Many news outlets have been quick to attribute this proposal to the infamous Project 2025, but the idea that the federal government should take a backseat in shaping education policy is hardly a new one. Its history traces back to the Southern Manifesto, a 1956 Congressional proclamation signed by nineteen U.S. Senators and eighty-two Representatives—all from former Confederate states—characterizing the Supreme Court’s decision as judicial overreach and pledging to resist school desegregation by “all lawful means.”
For those who thought this movement began with contemporary billionaires and conservative think tanks, think again. The purported argument for “states’ rights” in education is as much about ideology as it is about historical resistance to federal intervention, particularly when that intervention sought to dismantle racial segregation. So, before we crown Project 2025 the grand villain of public education, let us take a Constitutional walk down memory lane.
The manifesto’s legal argument was based on a loose interpretation of the Tenth Amendment which contended that controlling education policy was not a power granted to the federal government under the Constitution and therefore should remain in the hands of the states. In doing so, it conveniently ignored the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, which provides a clear Constitutional basis for ensuring that state-run education systems do not violate fundamental civil rights. Decades later, the same arguments about “federal overreach” persist, though often dressed in the language of efficiency, parent’s rights, and local control rather than outright defiance of racial integration.
The Department of Education, formally established in 1979, has been a frequent target of conservative efforts to downsize or eliminate federal involvement in schooling. Former President Ronald Reagan tried and failed to abolish the department during his first term, while Trump’s previous Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, supported so-called “school choice” initiatives. While making policy choices that harmed schools’ abilities to teach, conservatives labeled these schools as failing, then offered their desired solution—deregulation of schools—for a problem they built.
During Trump’s second campaign, the Heritage Foundation explicitly called for eliminating the Department of Education in its Project 2025 policy blueprint, arguing that federal oversight of schooling is an inefficient, unconstitutional intrusion. Project 2025 advocates for block-granting federal education funds to states with minimal strings attached, which would transfer power back to state governments and reduce federal enforcement of civil rights protections in education.
This renewed push to dismantle federal education oversight echoes the core tenets of the Southern Manifesto. Though today’s proponents of state control over education are unlikely to invoke segregationist rhetoric, the structural consequences of their policies disproportionately impact marginalized communities, much like their predecessors’ efforts in the mid-twentieth century.
Dismantling the Department of Education would likely weaken enforcement of federal civil rights protections in schools—such as Title IX (prohibiting sex discrimination) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)—and widen disparities in school funding, curriculum standards, and educational opportunities, leading to a fragmented and inequitable system in which the quality of students’ education would depend even more on their ZIP code and state politics.
States should not always be left to their own devices. The Jim Crow South’s “separate but equal” doctrine was a case study in the dangers of unchecked state control over education. The federal government’s role in enforcing desegregation, funding Title I schools, and ensuring equal access to education has been essential in counteracting the prevalence of racial and economic inequality.
The movement to dismantle the Department of Education is not a novel response to bloated bureaucracy or inefficiency. It is a decades-old ideological project rooted in resistance to racial and social progress. Project 2025 is merely the latest repackaging of an argument that has persisted since the 1950s.
Recycling is good; recycling racist policies is not.