The fight over the U.S. Department of Education has begun, but the battle lines are a little blurry.
President Trump says he wants to close the department, and the Senate is expected to vote soon on the confirmation of Linda McMahon, his nominee to be education secretary.
At her recent confirmation hearing, McMahon said she would work to realize Trump's vision of unwinding the department and "return education to the states where it belongs."
At the same hearing, though, some Republicans appeared torn about the fate of the department – because they support many of the things it does.
'Red tape on their desks'
The Education Department has always been a popular target for Republicans, a morass of federal bureaucracy and a rallying cry for states' rights.
"In many cases, our wounds are caused by the excessive consolidation of power in our federal education establishment," McMahon told lawmakers at her confirmation hearing, blaming the department for falling student achievement, among other ills. "Outstanding teachers are tired of political ideology in their curriculum and red tape on their desks."
But later in the hearing, it was a fellow Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who reminded her colleagues that the education department doesn't control schools. In fact, federal law makes it illegal for the department to tell them what or even how to teach, she said.
"We included a number of provisions [in federal law] that were very, very specific in prohibiting any federal employee from mandating, directing or controlling … instructional content, academic standards and assessments, curricula," Murkowski reminded lawmakers.
To meaningfully debate whether the department should be closed, everyone needs to agree on and understand what, exactly, the department does and does not do.
Money, money, money
The Department of Education has two main jobs, in addition to managing the federal student loan system: It protects students' civil rights and sends money to schools that need it most. But, just as the department doesn't control classrooms, it doesn't control budgets either.
"There's been a lot of talk about dismantling the Department of Education. … But before we begin, I want to explain what [it] actually does," said the Senate education committee's Republican chair, Louisiana's Bill Cassidy. "On average, only about 10% of public funds that go towards educating the child comes from the federal taxpayer."
Indeed, the nation's schools are funded almost entirely by states and local taxes. Which is why a wealthier school system might spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars more per student than a less-well-off school system just a few miles away.
What the Education Department does is try to even the scales just a bit.
That 10% of funding that does come from the department, as small as it is, is targeted to help the nation's most vulnerable kids in big cities and tiny, one-stop towns. It also helps pay for costly special education services.
Even Republicans at the hearing wanted to hear McMahon commit to keep this federal funding flowing, even if the department is closed.
At one point, she reassured lawmakers, "Yes, it is not the president's goal to defund the programs. It is only to have it operate more efficiently."
Protecting students with disabilities
The department also enforces federal civil rights laws, including Title IX, banning sex-based discrimination, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which helps fund and guarantees a free and appropriate public education to kids with disabilities.
When McMahon suggested the management of IDEA could be shifted to a different federal agency, Democrat Maggie Hassan, of New Hampshire, offered a history lesson.
"Before IDEA, before the Department of Education existed, state and local schools did not educate these kids [with disabilities]," Hassan said. "They barred them from the classrooms. These kids were institutionalized and abused."
It wasn't clear how Republicans at the hearing felt about moving responsibility for IDEA out of the Education Department, though the first question McMahon got from a Republican lawmaker was about how the department could do even more to help kids with disabilities, specifically dyslexia.
"What would be your approach to make sure that the child who's dyslexic is diagnosed at an early stage and receives the intervention that she or he would need?" asked Cassidy, the committee chairman, whose daughter has dyslexia.
McMahon's answer was brief and did not reference IDEA.
"I certainly very much would like to be sure that we are looking to diagnose issues like this, like dyslexia early, because we have found that it can be turned around," McMahon told Cassidy. "So I'd like to work with you and understand how we could have a better approach for that in our school systems."
The department as enforcer
Where Republicans seemed most angry with the Department, accusing it of overreach, was with a Biden-era effort to expand Title IX protections for transgender students in K-12 and college.
Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri decried these "binding regulations that required our college campuses to put biological men into women's locker rooms."
Hawley excoriated the department for going too far – but then told McMahon he hopes she'll push the department to be more aggressive in other areas.
"Will you enforce the law, Title VI, to the hilt? And will you make sure that Jewish Americans are safe on our campuses, for heaven's sake?"
To which McMahon replied: "Absolutely. Or face defunding."
Since McMahon's hearing, the Trump administration has added to the department's enforcement to-do list, warning all schools that receive federal money, K-12 and colleges alike, that it considers Biden-era efforts around diversity and equity to be themselves discriminatory.
They have two weeks to stop these discriminatory programs or they'll have to answer – to the U.S. Department of Education.
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