What would it mean if President-elect Trump dismantled the US Department of Education?

  In her role as former chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment, Linda McMahon oversaw an enterprise that popularized the “takedown” for millions of wrestling fans. But as President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of education, the Trump loyalist may be tasked with taking down the very department Trump has asked her to lead.

  If Trump does dismantle the Department of Education as he has promised to do, he will have succeeded at something that President Ronald Reagan vowed to do in 1980. Just like Trump, Reagan campaigned on abolishing the department, which at the time was only a year old. Since then, the Republican Party platform has repeatedly called for eliminating the Education Department, which oversees a range of programs and initiatives. These include special funding for schools in low-income communities – known as Title I – and safeguarding the rights of students with disabilities.

Trump’s K-12 education budget: Cuts for public schools, billions for private school vouchers

  For the fourth consecutive year, the Trump administration and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos have proposed substantial cuts to the U.S. Department of Education’s budget. If Congress enacts their proposed budget for the fiscal year 2021, it would reduce the department’s total funding by $5.6 billion—a cut of nearly 8 percent from last year’s funding level—while dedicating $5 billion in tax credits to the administration’s private school voucher scheme.