Panic Meter Check: Bills to Abolish the Department of Education
Here's where things stand
Update May 13, 2025: The Reconciliation Bill is Out (and Currently Stuck in Committee!)
Okay y’all—we got the reconciliation bill! It doesn’t mess with IDEA’s money this round, but it’s laying the foundation to defund and privatize public education (which, if you’ve been here a while, you know is a huge issue for all the reasons we’ve already screamed about together.)
Here’s what’s in it:
A $5 billion federal school voucher program disguised as a “donor tax credit.”
Your money can go to private school tuition, homeschool supplies, or even for-profit virtual schools. And families making up to 300% of the area’s median income are eligible.
So basically: this is a tax shelter for the wealthy, not help for working families.
This is part of the Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA), originally introduced as H.R. 833 back in early 2025. But Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee quietly folded it into the May 13 markup of the tax section of the reconciliation package.
ECCA now includes a new line that says voucher-accepting schools must "comply with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)."
Except no one knows which parts, how enforcement would work, or who’s responsible. According to the National Center for Learning Disabilities, these “protections” are insufficient, vague, and unenforceable.
Also, there are higher education attacks in this reconciliation bill:
- Caps Pell Grant growth
- Eliminates subsidized loans and Grad PLUS
- Penalizes colleges if students can’t repay loans (so… punishing schools that serve low-income students?? Cool cool cool.)
What’s not in the bill:
- Block-granting of IDEA or Title I
- No direct DEI bans in the bill text (although those are already being hacked away via executive orders and lawsuits.)
Remember: reconciliation only happens once per year. If they use this round on tax credits and higher ed cuts, they might save the deeper K–12 restructuring like folding IDEA and Title I into block grants for next year (we really need to flip the House, you guys!!)
Ask your reps:
- Will you vote to remove the $5 billion school voucher tax credit from the reconciliation bill?
- How will you ensure that voucher-accepting private schools are held to the same accountability and civil rights standards as public schools?
- Why is Congress funding private school vouchers before fully funding IDEA and Title I?
Keep the pressure on!
[Outdated] From May 2, 2025: The Budget
This is the scenario I’ve been warning about for months.
Trump’s Fiscal Year 2026 budget proposal just dropped and it does the same thing these bills threaten to do through budget reconciliation instead of legislation. (Panic meter: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥)
Budget reconciliation…AKA the real way you dismantle the Department of Education without needing a single new law.
The Trump regime plans to gut equity-focused programs, collapse IDEA into a “simplified” stream, and use “parental rights” as an excuse to yank special ed funding from districts that don’t comply with their politics.
It’s all in this new post I wrote.
So if you read this post and thought, “Whew, looks like we’re in the clear for now,” go read that one. We are not.
They just need a budget and 51 Senate votes.
Panic Meter Check: Bills to Abolish the Department of Education
Y’all keep asking me: what's up with all these "abolish the Department of Education" bills. “Are they serious?” “Should we be panicking yet?”
So I put together a full rundown of what’s been introduced, where each one stands, and where it falls on the 🔥 Panic Meter 🔥
Ever since 1867, a certain side of Congress 👀 occasionally remembers they hate the Department of Education (usually because they think schools are too diverse, too inclusive, or teach kids actual history/current events) and we get these “delightful” bills.
This year, thanks to *gestures around at literally everything*, things are extra on fire. So multiple bills have been introduced to abolish the Department of Education.
Republicans have proposed their plans with varying levels of seriousness.
Note: None of these bills are law yet. None have even made it out of committee. But the fact that so many bills have been introduced this Congress tells you exactly where Republicans want to go if they get the chance.
My question: Do they talk to each other? Like, why so many versions?
Anyway, let's break it down…
Update May 14, 2025:
H.R. 3345 (Rep. Clay Higgins)
Bill: “Sovereign States Education Restoration Act.”
How it would work:
Abolish the Department of Education within 270 days.
IDEA moved to HHS.
Pell Grants and student loans handed to the Treasury
Education research… also to the Treasury (???).
Creates two giant block grant programs:
One for K–12 and early education
One for postsecondary
States can use the money however they want with no real strings attached.
Panic Meter: 🪦🪦🪦 (I’m not scared, I’m just tired.)
Key takeaway: This bill isn’t passing. It won’t get 60 Senate votes, and it’s less of a serious policy proposal and more of a press release so Clay Higgins and Barry Moore can say “Look, constituents! I made a bill to earn your vote! I also care deeply about ripping resources away from children! May I have money?”
These bills are about normalizing the idea that public education is the enemy (and pleasing Daddy Trump) but the real threat is still reconciliation. Because that doesn’t need 60 votes. It doesn’t need bipartisan support. And it’s already being used to gut the Department of Education quietly and effectively.
H.R. 899 (Rep. Thomas Massie)
Bill: "The Department of Education shall terminate on December 31, 2026."
Length: Literally one sentence.
Plan: 🦗🦗🦗
Panic Meter: 🔥
Key takeaway: Massie has embarrassingly reintroduced this one-sentence bill every year since 2017. I think he just does it so he can high five Rand Paul and say he owned the libs, or something.
Speaking of Sen. Rand Paul…S. 1148
S. 1148 is companion legislation to H.R. 899, which is a fancy way of saying it’s the Senate version of the same unserious idea.
They’re literally the same thing.
I did, however, forget Rand Paul existed for a while. So that was nice.
Panic Meter: 🪨 Forget the flame, gentlemen. I actually think both of these bills get a “Big Ol’ Lump of Nothing” on the Panic Meter.
H.R. 2691 (Rep. Barry Moore)
Bill TLDR; "Abolish the ED and hand money to states based on their federal tax payments."
Plan:
ED abolished 30 days after passage.
All programs terminated except Pell Grants and student loans.
Pell and loans moved to the Treasury Department.
States get block grants based on their residents’ federal taxes.
Panic Meter: 🔥🔥
Plot holes:
No civil rights enforcement built in.
Block grants = zero accountability.
And states with lower income would lose huge chunks of funding.
Let me rant about how especially stupid that last one is:
These losers hear “poor” and think “urban areas” because they're racist and have spent their entire careers trying to make sure urban areas are poor and segregated.
Meanwhile, in Reality Land, many of the poorest states in the country are deeply red and overwhelmingly rural.
Look at this graph:
Red states depend heavily on Title I funding to support their low-income students.
Barry Moore is a Republican from freakin’ Alabama and he proposed a bill that would gut funding for his own state’s schools.
These people are trying to punish a caricature of LiBeRaL eLiTeS, but all they’re really doing is defunding their own voters’ kids.
H.R. 2456 (Rep. Nathaniel Moran)
Bill: "Orderly Liquidation of the Department of Education Act."
Plan:
ED gets a multi-year wind-down.
Creates a new "Office of Education" in HHS.
Transfers various programs to multiple federal agencies: HHS, Treasury, DOJ, Labor, Interior, DOD, etc.
Panic Meter: 🔥🔥
Key dangers:
Tries to look responsible while still dismantling the Department.
Sprawls the ED’s 17 offices across a dozen un-specialized agencies with no infrastructure to support such moves and no coordination plan.
Civil rights oversight shipped off to the DOJ where investigations go to die under conservative leadership.
Defunds key protections by 2036.
S. 1402 (Sen. Mike Rounds)
Bill: “Returning Education to Our States Act.”
How it would work:
ED would be abolished one year after its passage.
Transfers almost every single ED office to different federal agencies who would have no idea what to do with any of their new responsibilities.
Replaces Title I and other programs with block grants to states (AKA lump-sums of money with almost no strings attached, if any.)
Panic Meter: 🔥🔥🔥 (I don’t like this one)
Key dangers:
Breaks apart centralized oversight.
Block grants = less equity, less accountability, more of leaders like Ryan Walters and Greg Abbott doing whatever they want.
Unfortunately, Rounds introduced this bill at at a time when these ideas are “buzzy” and he has concepts of a plan.
We’ve seen what happens when states are left to “figure it out.”
They don’t 🙄
Without federal guardrails, the most vulnerable students get left behind. Sometimes it’s by accident. A lot of times it’s on purpose.
But you bet your booty that if the Republicans haphazardly break apart an office that helps oversee roughly 46,900,000 students and hand laws like IDEA off to RFK Jr., kids are absolutely going to fall through the cracks.
Can’t you just smell the government efficiency?!
Once again: All of these bills are technically still active, but none of them are moving right now. They’ve been introduced and referred to committees aaaaand… that’s it. (Most bills die in committee!)
That being said, my advice is the usual…
Call your reps. Tell them to oppose these bills.
Get local. Don’t forget to annoy the 💩 out of your state representatives and education leaders. If the feds can’t/won’t protect public education, your State Department of Education, Governor, and local school district/school board have to.
Support organizations fighting for public education. The unions and the ACLU are great places to start.
Share what you know. The more people who know what’s going on, the harder it is for them to try any of this quietly.
I'll keep tracking every bill so you don’t have to! Follow me here for updates.
And I’ll see you next time :)
- Frazz