Written by the Education Team
For over 45 years, the Department of Education has played a critical and wide-ranging role in supporting students across California. It’s provided insights and data to better understand how our state can reach more kids and improve their ability to succeed in the classroom and their careers. It’s funded programs and resources for low-income students and kids with disabilities. It’s helped feed students and give them more energy to learn while supporting infants and toddlers with developmental delays. It’s worked to ensure our students are treated equally under the law and get equitable access to education.
With the future of the Department of Education in peril and misinformation easily accessible, below are answers to how the Department impacts kids and classrooms in California – and what our state must do to ensure that impact continues.
The Department of Education provides funding that goes towards supporting high-poverty and higher-need schools and students, special education programs, training teachers, afterschool and summer learning centers, and many other programs aimed at equalizing opportunity and providing students support. The Department also plays a critical role in student financial aid for higher education, providing grants and subsidized loans to students with financial need.
In the 2024-25 federal budget, California was allocated a total of $7.8 billion through the Department of Education, including $2.4 billion for Title I (meant to support higher-need schools and students and close achievement gaps) and $1.5 billion for special education programs. Higher education students received an additional nearly $5 billion in direct financial aid from the Department (around 10% of Californians (3.9 million) have outstanding subsidized federal student loans totaling almost $150 billion).
How does the Department of Education increase equity by supporting higher-need schools and students?
Title I is a federal program overseen by the Department of Education designed to provide financial assistance to schools and districts with higher numbers of high-need students (as measured by the percentage and concentration of students living in poverty). Its overall goal is to close achievement gaps by helping all kids meet state academic standards, especially those in our most under-resourced schools. After the Department of Education allocates funds to each state, the California Department of Education distributes funds to Local Education Agencies (such as school districts and county offices of education), who then distributes them to the specific schools who need it most. The funds go towards targeted student assistance, adding and training teachers and support staff, tutoring, summer and afterschool programs, and more.
The Department also oversees the implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). The ESSA requires states to maintain a school accountability system based on assessments of student performance, graduation rates, and other measures. States must then provide assistance to their lowest performing schools based on this system.
The Department of Education collects, organizes, and publicly distributes education data from all 50 states through the National Center for Education Statistics. That data includes academic performance in math, reading, and science, school enrollment, graduation rates, student demographics and performance/access across demographics, and student-teacher ratios, among many other areas. The Department of Education also provides a common measure of student achievement across states through the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
By having access to this data, states are provided the ability to see how they compare to other states and a roadmap for how and where they need to better support students and teachers. Through the Department of Education’s continued “longitudinal studies,” states are also able to track their students’ progress over time to have a basis for how their implemented action plans and policies are working.
Through the Office of Civil Rights, the Department of Education helps enforce civil rights protections for students by investigating complaints of discrimination at schools that receive federal funding, as well as requiring schools comply with federal civil rights laws concerning race, gender, disability status, and other protected classes in order to receive funding. The Office of Civil Rights also provides education and training to communities, schools, and social service workers on how best to prevent discrimination.
The Office for Civil Rights also collects data, through the Civil Rights Data Collection, from every public school and district in the country every two years. This data includes access to courses, school discipline such as suspensions or expulsions, and teacher experience and diversity, among many other areas. This data can then be used by states as a roadmap for how and where they need to increase equitable access and educational experiences for students.
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), passed in 1975 and reauthorized in 1990, ensures students with disabilities have access to a quality public education that meets their unique needs. The Department of Education helps implement IDEA through grants that provide states’ funding for K-12 special ed programs and services, support for kids under age 3 with developmental delays through California’s Early Start Program, and technology to provide more inclusive classrooms, among other areas. They then monitor the use of these grant funds to ensure states are using them to provide the necessary education for students with disabilities as required by law, as well as following all discrimination laws.
Within the Department of Education, the Office of Special Education Programs provides training and professional development resources for schools and teachers in every state to use to increase the effectiveness of special education programs. The National Center for Special Education Research then studies and provides analysis on how to improve educational outcomes for students with disabilities.
The Department of Education and Department of Agriculture work together to administer student meal programs in every state. These programs provide breakfasts and lunches to students, as well as meals during summer breaks and at childcare centers. The Department of Education’s main responsibility is ensuring schools and districts are aware of these programs and have everything they need to participate and get meals to their students.
In California, the Department of Education helps fund the California Universal Meals Program, a first-of-its-kind program that works to provide free, nutritious breakfasts and lunches to all public-school students in California regardless of their family income. Providing meals to all kids helped remove some of the stigma associated with the program, but this often can be the only food children living in poverty eat each day. In the 2022-23 school year, the Program helped schools serve more than 849 million meals to students.
The Department of Education helps students attend college by providing financial aid, making college costs more transparent, offering support for low-income students, and ensuring students and institutions meet high standards for quality education.
The Department oversees several programs and initiatives designed to make college more affordable and accessible. These include financial aid programs like Pell grants, federal work-study, subsidized and unsubsidized student loans, and teach grants that provide financial assistance to students planning to become teachers in high-need fields. The Department also administers the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, a critical tool students use to apply for federal financial aid which also provides resources and outreach programs to help students and families understand their options for paying for college. The Department further helps families reduce the cost of college through tax benefits like the American Opportunity Tax Credit and the Lifetime Learning Credit, while also helping students who enter public service fields such as teaching, healthcare, and non-profit work qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness.
To help ensure colleges and universities are accredited and meet certain standards, the Department provides essential oversight so students can trust they are receiving a quality education. The Department also supports institutions that predominantly serve underrepresented student groups, such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges and Universities, and Hispanic-Serving Institutions.
No (technically).
The Department of Education was created by an act of Congress, and therefore can only be eliminated by an act of Congress. Similarly, ESSA, IDEA, and other major federal education laws such as the Higher Education Act of 1965, the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act, and the Perkins Career and Technical Education Act, can only be eliminated or changed by an act of Congress. The Department of Education is also currently charged with the enforcement of the Civil Rights Act in schools receiving federal funding, including Title XI protections against discrimination by sex, and it would require changes in law to modify or eliminate these requirements.
However, the President and the Secretary of Education do have discretion in terms of where they focus the Department’s attention and how rigorously it enforces specific federal law requirements, at times bending (and possibly breaking) the intent of the current laws. The Department also has some waiver authorities to grant states exemptions to federal laws. As part of ESSA, though, Congress placed constraints on these waiver authorities in response to the Obama administration’s use of waivers to change the nature of the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act.
If an act of Congress to eliminate the Department of Education were to happen, it would likely be through a process called “budget reconciliation.” This is a procedural move that can be used to avoid super-majority vote requirements in the Senate (allowing for legislation to pass with a simple majority) and sets limits on the length of legislative debate. Since support for the elimination of the Department of Education isn’t likely to include 60 Senators, budget reconciliation would almost certainly have to be used to get it done.
The budget reconciliation process is a highly technical one and the House and Senate began the process a long way apart in terms of what they envision for education and how much spending to cut over the next decade. The House and Senate would need to bridge this divide and come to an agreement, then send those instructions to the Education and Workforce Committee in each house to work out the details and pass the comprehensive budget reconciliation packages. It would be within the two committees that decisions about eliminating the Department of Education or making major reforms to it would be made.
How California Must Respond
The Department of Education, through all that it has provided to support students, equity, and research, should not be immune to change. A rethinking of operations, if done thoughtfully and with the purpose of improving success for all students, could very well improve the Department’s effectiveness and how its resources are used in California.
Any reorganization, however, cannot come at the expense of responsibility. There must be a single federal agency, in some form or another, that holds all states accountable for student outcomes. Without proper funding to support higher-need students at risk of not meeting education standards, as well as monitored requirements for that funding, achievement gaps will increase. Without the collection and distribution of state education data, inequities won’t be identified and will exacerbate. Without the monitored implementation of funds for special education and meals programs, money could be allocated away from the kids who need it.
Taking a sledgehammer to the Department of Education is not a solution for improving the education of California kids. And if that is indeed the path forward, our leaders must be prepared to act quickly and decisively.
Federal-Level Actions:
- Continue legal challenges: In response to the President’s executive order to close the Department of Education, the California Attorney General has led a multistate coalition to challenge both mass layoffs at the Department and any transfers of core functions of the Department required by federal law. As further attempts to close the Department are pursued without congressional approval, legal action of this nature must continue.
- Pressure Congress: As the budget reconciliation process continues, we all must call on California’s congressional delegation to fight to preserve the Department of Education with all of its current functions as required by federal law and maintain current education spending levels.
State-Level Actions:
- Develop state budget that distributes new education funding with an equity focus: The California Legislature is in the process of developing its budget for the 2025-26 school year. Because of the state constitutional minimum funding guarantee (Proposition 98), they are likely to have to provide significant additional one-time funding for our schools. If cuts happen at the federal level, their impact will fall on districts and schools serving high concentrations of students from families living in poverty. To at least partially offset this, the Legislature should ensure that one-time education funds in the budget are distributed with an equity focus to support those most impacted.
- Add student protections to state law if federal laws aren’t enforced: The Department of Education is now only selectively enforcing federal law requirements, a stark example being the Secretary of Education recently closing the San Francisco regional office of the Office of Civil Rights, which has 1,500 pending cases. If legal challenges related to Department of Education staffing reductions and the transfer of core functions are unsuccessful or are held up in court, California needs to consider state alternatives. This should include creating its own civil rights infrastructure to investigate violations of student and educator civil rights and Title IX.
- Maintain federally required data collections: As changes to the Department of Education are implemented, it is possible that many current federal data collection requirements may lapse. Of particular concern are data reporting requirements pertaining to special education and the Office of Civil Rights. The Legislature should use the upcoming budget to require the California Department of Education complete an analysis of all of the federal data reporting requirements. Using the results of this analysis, the Legislature should then pass state requirements to continue the most important of these reporting requirements.
