What is the role of the federal government in education?
by: Ji Ho (Geo) Yang, PHD Candidate at the University of Washington
What is the federal government’s role in education and in our schools? This blog is an extension of last month’s post about DEI and the need to continue racial equity work in education and our schools. When chatting with peers and friends about what has transpired in the first 100 days of the Trump administration, I noticed that many people have a misunderstanding of public education and the federal government’s role in our schools. This inspired me to engage in learning by reflecting on my educational journey and exploring more about education at the federal level. Here, I share my understanding, experiences, and learning.
The Trump administration’s move to get rid of DoE is just the latest assault on (public) education and an obstacle towards a more just world. The pretense for this move is inherently false, including notions of indoctrinating youth to radicalism, mandating curricula, and overreach (similar take to my past post about Critical Race Theory-CRT). This isn’t to say that the DoE doesn’t have any issues or systemic problems, which will be discussed here. There are undoubtedly issues of bloat, inefficiencies, and accountability.
However, the ploy to dismantle the DoE is part of larger plans to centralize white dominance and nationalism, and sanitize the government’s social responsibilities (which represents the greater ethos of Project 2025). There’s nothing new about this ploy, historically or globally. We have seen the same playbook for destroying public education in service of white dominant interests since Reconstruction, the fight against segregation, and neoliberalism of the 80s.
What is the federal government’s role in education? What is the DoE’s role in our educational system? A large part of it is dealing with higher education, such as student loans and grants. I am a former recipient of the Pell grant for my undergraduate studies, which made getting my B.A. actually financially possible. However, just like other departments and facets of the U.S. government, DoE’s responsibilities are often outsourced to private entities, such as student loan systems that many of us have to deal with.
Another key aspect of the DoE is education research. An awesome data set that I have used in my doctoral research journey is the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) – Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), which is a nationwide mandatory survey for all districts and schools. This data set provides in-depth school-level information that is publicly available. The DoE plays a major role in resourcing research pertaining to education, which is a key arm in learning how to make education and schools more equitable and accountable. Over at the College of Education in UW-Seattle, we are certainly feeling the tension created by the uncertainty over the DoE, the greater Trump agenda, and other social and geo-political issues.
Connecting back to the previous blog post, the DoE does crucial work pertaining to protecting vulnerable educational stakeholders. Here, a key facet of DoE is providing resources and guidance for special education. This includes outlining legal parameters and funding with Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) and 504 plans. DoE is also a major oversight component to discrimination in education such as protecting affirmative action.
However, DoE does not directly deal with state and local operations of education and schools, such as curriculum and funding. As discussed in a previous blog post about CRT in education, the DoE, let alone the federal government, does not directly mandate or steer school operations. Federal laws/policies do have immense influence on how states and districts operate their schools, such as standards-based learning and standardized testing. The federal government does provide extensive, but not bulk, funding for schools. But DoE does not mandate CRT, LGBTQ+ texts, the 1619 curriculum, or other “liberal” ideological concepts.
In its focus on higher education, research, discrimination, and special education, DoE has many issues that must be addressed departmentally and holistically. The mess pertaining to student loan servicing and loan forgiveness is terrible. The assault on DEI, such as affirmative action in college admissions, is ghastly. The silencing of student voices and protest, such as protests for Palestine and its people, is abominable. These examples of DoE’s shortcomings and issues show how particular governmental issues are not only related to multiple areas and departments, but are also tied to larger political and ideological battles happening in our communities. Schools should not have to depend solely on their district and state for resourcing and guidance. The federal government should have a key role in keeping states and districts resourced and accountable for making schools equitable and just, with a goal towards the future. However, that role should be balanced with state, district, and local school community responsibilities. The following blog post will explore further what a reimagined alignment across federal, down to the school, could look like, which is directly inspired by the teachers in my research.