As education advocates from the national to local level praise President Donald Trump’s commitment to deliver the four-decade-old conservative policy goal of abolishing the Department of Education, they warn that Democrat-controlled states could implement worse curricula than the federal DOE and ask the president to consider directly funding local school districts or parents through school vouchers.

President Trump campaigned on shuttering the 45-year-old federal department in 2024, and shortly after taking office, he moved swiftly to keep his promise. “The Secretary of Education shall, to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities while ensuring the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely,” stated President Trump’s executive order, issued last Thursday, March 20. He also cut the number of federal employees working in the DOE by approximately half.

President Trump has largely signaled he will allow states to set their own education policies — something that concerns parental rights advocates living in liberal states such as California.

“If it does come down to the states, I would be a big advocate,” Sonja Shaw, president of the Chino Valley (California) Unified School District Board of Education, told “Washington Watch” last Friday. But “if you give back to local control, in states like California, that could be kind of nerve-wracking for a lot of us here fighting the good fight.” Democrat-controlled states determined to promote such controversial programs as anti-American history curricula, critical race theory, or the history of the LGBTQ movement “can make it very, very difficult for districts like ours that are actually trying to educate and not indoctrinate” students.

Shaw faced death threats and official investigations from California officials for adopting a parental notification policy that requires teachers to tell parents if children begin to identify as another gender at school. 

Instead, she favors the federal government awarding education dollars “directly to the districts based on merit,” said Shaw. “Give it to the counties. Local control is the best, right? And if you give it to the counties, they know exactly what is needed and where it’s needed, and they can disperse the money.” The awarding of federal education grants “needs to be merit-based,” determined by test score improvements, “because a lot of states are like California. We have some great [states], but we also have some horrific ones that have weaponized the Department of Education towards districts like ours that are trying to actually educate kids.”

Two former secretaries of education hope the president will go one step further: Bypass educational bureaucrats at the state and local level and simply give federal education funds directly to parents through school vouchers.

“A better approach is to simply give Title I money to poor parents and let them pick their schools. That is exactly what Trump’s order intends to do. Putting funding in students’ backpacks would eliminate the bureaucracy that reduces its impact when administered federally,” wrote Reagan administration Secretary of Education William J. Bennett in a Newsweek op-ed this week. “According to Gloria Romero, cofounder of the charter school Explore Academy, local and state education agencies employ approximately 50,000 people mainly to comply with burdensome (and often woke) requirements imposed by the then-4,400 Education Department employees.”

Bennett echoed his own call to treat federal public school dollars akin to Pell Grants as he co-authored a second op-ed with President George H.W. Bush’s secretary of education and 1996 Republican presidential hopeful, Lamar Alexander. Unlike local school funding based on “creaky formulas that distribute funds to schools in ways that may never reach the youngsters meant to benefit from them,” in college “we give Pell Grants to needy college students that accompany them to the colleges they actually attend. If such vouchers — which is what Pell Grants are — helped to create the best colleges, why not use them to create the best schools?” asked the secretaries. “That would eliminate layers of bureaucracy, inject needed competition into the education system, and shove Uncle Sam out of the way of state decision-makers and, especially, of parents making the best school choices for their children.”

For instance, Bennett noted in an interview with Fox News, classical academies have higher academic standards and “teach character.”

“Federal control of education has become a jobs program for bureaucrats, and it puts students last,” wrote Bennett.

Their successor, Trump-47 Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, has promised her deep personnel cuts will shear off “bureaucratic bloat” that has attended public schools due to decades of top-down federal policies. 

Bennett concluded that “history and common sense show the solution is boosting education freedom, not preserving the failed Washington status quo.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) has starkly criticized the actions Trump has already taken to rein in the federal education bureaucracy. “This overreach needs to be rejected immediately by a co-equal branch of government. Or was Congress eliminated by this executive order, too?” he asked.

That left Shaw bemused. “Let’s just lay out the facts,” she said. “Newsom put his kids in private school when he shut down schools here in California for the majority of the children. He also sued our district and other districts for just wanting parental involvement. So, of course, he’s going to be opposed to something that’s going to benefit our children, because he’s never been successful at helping our educational system here in California,” she noted.

“They have mismanaged and funneled monies through to the lobbyists, the special interests through these departments, all while failing kids at reading, writing, and math,” Shaw told the program. “Every time he speaks, he just exposes himself.”

Yet Newsom has legal backup. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) filed suit against the Trump administration in Massachusetts, while the National Education Association (NEA) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) sued the administration in Democratic Maryland.

Legal experts find the lawsuits ironic, because the Department of Education’s existence violates the Constitution. “The vast majority of functions carried out by the Department of Education are not authorized by the Constitution. That is because the Constitution grants the federal government only limited, enumerated powers, none of which encompass education policy,” wrote Thomas A. Berry at the Cato Institute. The enumerated powers, which states delegated to the federal government, may be found in Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. All other powers are reserved to the states “or the people” under the Tenth Amendment. “The president and education secretary should make a clear case for why their oaths to defend the Constitution require this executive action. If they do so, this action could be an important step toward restoring the federal government to its proper role.”

Since the department was established by Congress, Congress must act to formally abolish it. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) reintroduced a bill to abolish the Department of Education for good (H.R. 899). The one-sentence bill reads in its entirety, “The Department of Education shall terminate on December 31, 2026.”

“When this department was put in place, it was pretty much a giveaway from [President Jimmy] Carter to the unions. And since then, the Department of Ed has not closed one achievement gap. Kids are still failing at reading, writing, and math,” noted Shaw. “Since this department was put in place, it just funnels money through to the special interest groups, which does not benefit our children.”

“We were doing fine educationally prior to the Department of Education being created on the federal level, and we’ll be okay afterwards,” said former Congressman Jody Hice, who hosts “Washington Watch” on Fridays.

“You have been really on the tip of the spear on this issue and so many other issues that the education in California is specifically dealing with, from LGBT indoctrination and [more],” Hice told Shaw. “I just want to say thank you. God bless you. Godspeed to you and others who are stepping up.”