The News
US education officials have expressed growing concern that US President-elect Donald Trump’s administration will try to exert control over campuses, with funding, diversity initiatives, campus life, and curriculums all seeming in the balance.
On the campaign trail, Trump had promised to eliminate the Department of Education, but has since tapped Linda McMahon, a former wrestling executive, to run the agency and pledged in a statement announcing the pick to “send Education BACK TO THE STATES.”
The head of the National Education Association, a union that represents US public school teachers, pushed back, saying that “by selecting Linda McMahon, Donald Trump is showing that he could not care less about our students’ futures.”
McMahon’s education experience is limited to serving on a college board of trustees and the Connecticut Board of Education, and she is a “fierce advocate for Parent’s Rights,” according to Trump.
SIGNALS
Higher education institutions prepare for conservative attacks
Republican control of Congress and the presidency has raised concern among some colleges and universities that they will be targeted by conservatives with funding cuts and increased taxes on endowments, especially if they were deemed to have pro-Palestine movements on campus. Others worry that the department could also try to enshrine conservative ideology in the national accreditation system for higher education. However, abolishing the department altogether, is widely expected to be a more remote possibility, as it would require a Senate supermajority — a challenge for the incoming administration, The Washington Post wrote. “It’s more realistic than ever, but I don’t want to overstate the possibility,” an education policy expert told CBS News. “It’s going to be hard.”
Trump may seek to roll back Title IX protections in schools
Donald Trump also promised to roll back LBGTQ protections that the Biden administration had expanded under Title IX, which bans sex-based discrimination in schools. “We’re gonna end it on day one,” Trump said in an interview before the election. “It’ll be eliminated.” Brett Sokolow, who heads the Association of IX Administrators, said he also expected limits on transgender participation on school sports teams — something former Trump education secretary Betsy DeVos recently described as an “invasion” that Trump has to stop in a second term, echoing a frequent conservative talking point. “I’m not sure exactly what strategy [the administration] will take on that, but I would expect some version of all of this to begin working its way through the system,” Sokolow told trade publication K-12 Dive.
Vow to empower states on education could fall short of expectations
The president-elect has said that a key part of his agenda will be to move education regulation and oversight “back to the states, where it belongs,” a move that echoes a Heritage’ Foundation Project 2025 proposal to shift the federal government’s key funding mechanism for K-12 schools down to the state level. Even so, the vast majority of school funding already comes from state and local taxes. Some experts have noted that simply letting states decide their own educational policy would likely mean the president-elect will fall short of his campaign promises. “Trump ran on getting boys out of girls’ sports. He didn’t run on letting boys play in girls’ sports in blue states if they want to,” an education researcher at a conservative think tank said.